This year’s Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) elections saw the addition of a new option on the ballot—no confidence.
Students voting for candidates for executive positions had the options of voting abstain, no confidence, or for a specific candidate. According to chief electoral officer Frano Cavar, this was the first time ever that the no confidence option was included on the ballot.
Cavar said the notion of including no confidence on the ballot was first brought up at a CUSA council meeting on Jan. 10.
“Given the political climate that we were in last year, following the failure of the [Student Union Building referendum], there’s been a lot of, I don’t want to say distrust, but there’s been a lot of animosity towards CUSA,” Cavar said. “As opposed to just keeping it as a traditional abstain, we included the no confidence option as an abstention for people who wanted to voice their displeasure at the association.”
In voting for all but one of the six executive positions, the no confidence option received over 1,000 votes.
Under the options presented for CUSA president, a total of 1,019 people chose no confidence. This option, along with abstentions (882 votes), garnered more votes than two of the candidates— Carson Fischl (666 votes) and Caleb Broecker (477 votes).
Vice-president (student life) received the highest number of no confidence votes, with 1,457, representing 14.7 per cent of votes cast. This category also received the highest number of abstentions, with 1,441.
Vice-president (finance) received 881 no confidence votes, the lowest amongst all executive positions.
Ana Staffen, a third-year political science and Canadian studies student, said she voted no confidence for one of the executive positions because she didn’t feel either slate had provided a strong candidate.
“It was strategic, instead of simply voting abstain, because I thought that others may also vote no confidence and if there was an overwhelming amount, they may run new candidates for both slates,” Staffen said in a Facebook message.
According to Cavar, the ballots stated that no confidence votes would be treated as abstentions. He added that it was assumed people voting no confidence would probably choose to abstain if that was the only option given.
The decision was made to only include no confidence on the ballot for executive positions, and not councillors because the executive is the face of the association, he said.
For councillors, the highest number of abstaining votes were cast in the Faculty of Arts and Social Science, with 837 votes.
Current CUSA president Fahd Alhattab said the association has seen gradual increases in voter turnout over the last couple of years, with this year’s election marking the highest turnout ever.
A total of 9,849 votes were cast, representing 37.2 per cent of the voter population. In contrast, voter turnout in last year’s election was 33.1 per cent.
“I think it really speaks to how passionate our students are, it speaks to how lucky we are at Carleton to have such a passionate community,” Alhattab said. “I think at times it lends itself to maybe those divisive lines, but I think the good part we can see is you have [9,849] people voting and voicing themselves.”
Cavar said he would “100 per cent” recommend that no confidence be included on the ballots for future elections.
“It’s really a measure for the association to see how it’s doing moving forward,” he said. “I think it could be very important for the incoming executives to use that as a measure for their planning, making sure that they cater to those students who chose that option.”
– File photo
