On the morning after the final ballots were cast, 29 hopeful Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) councillor candidates awoke to find they had been disqualified for breaking rules they likely had no idea existed.

The CUSA electoral office decided the day before, after the candidates had handed in their campaign budgets, that the receipts they had included were invalid and then barred them from filling the seats they might have won.

Disqualifying these candidates for breaking ambiguous rules that were not explained to them is entirely unwarranted. Rejecting their appeals would set a dangerous precedent for the undergraduate student government system.

The electoral office failed to ensure at the outset of the election process that all candidates understood what specific information budgetary receipts would need to include. The electoral code simply states: “all election expenses shall be accounted for in actual Canadian dollars including tax.”

CUSA’s electoral officer, Sagal Osman, chose to interpret this to mean that receipts needed to differentiate taxes from subtotals and that e-mailed receipts would not be accepted. Yet this was only explained to candidates after they handed in their expense reports. Candidates were given a few hours to satisfy the electoral office’s demands and then were disqualified without notice and without the chance to justify their budgets. Some of these disqualified candidates were left with the impression that they were victims of the electoral system’s inherent bias, as almost all those disqualified endorsed the same slate.

While holding byelections to fill empty seats following elections would be the most democratic course of action, CUSA’s policy is to appoint students to vacant spots. So the partially-elected council will soon pick students to fill the seats now left empty due to disqualifications.

The will of students who voted is being ignored — a huge blow to democratic engagement on campus. CUSA is discouraging students from participating in their own government and raising doubt that their votes matter.