Many students are blaming the lack of candidates in the 2018 Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) election on a failure to sufficiently advertise the election.
Chief electoral officer (CEO), Nada Ibrahim, said it’s CUSA’s job to advertise elections. Because the members of the Elections Office weren’t hired until January this year, she said it wasn’t possible to advertise the elections far in advance. She also said her previous years working at the Elections Office began in November, which made it easier to advertise elections.
CUSA president Zameer Masjedee said the elections were advertised through posters around campus, a Facebook page, and Facebook advertisements. He said advertising is “primarily” the job of the Elections Office.
“It is [the Elections Office’s] job—you are getting paid as the chief electoral officer or the deputy electoral officer to make sure that we have a fair and democratic process with our student elections on campus” he said. “If there’s a lack of advertising or anything like that, [the Elections Office] should be the one that takes most ownership of it.”
Section 14.3 of the Electoral Code also reads, ”The CEO shall ensure that an Election Supplement is published by the Charlatan and other media (where applicable) in print, or online, and distributed before the first day of polling.”
No such ad was submitted to the Charlatan.
Ibrahim said the Elections Office has never run a paid advertisement in the Charlatan during her years working on the elections. The Charlatan has not run a paid advertisement for the CUSA elections since the 2014-15 year.
She also said that the Charlatan was present at CUSA meetings, and the Elections Office kept them informed on meetings and debates, as well as being available for interviews.
When asked whether she differentiated between an advertisement and a news article, Ibrahim said the coverage of the election by the Charlatan was advertising.
The Charlatan operates independently of CUSA, and requires that any advertisements that could be confused with editorial content be clearly labelled.
Masjedee said that because the Elections Office doesn’t have a large following on social media, CUSA shares any election material they post. Other than this, he said CUSA remains independent from the electoral process.
“You need the elections to be independent of CUSA because there will always be elected officials that run CUSA,” he continued. “So, you can’t have the people in power running the elections—then it’s not a democratic process.”
CUSA went to extra lengths to remove executives from the Elections Office hiring process when they passed a motion to remove the requirement that an executive be part of the hiring committee at a council meeting on Jan. 19.
Masjedee also said he thinks the Charlatan is responsible for advertising elections.
“The Charlatan, being a body that a lot of students really turn to for like their news media, it’s important that they also promote the elections on campus because for some people, that’s their sole source of information,” Masjedee said. “It’s everybody coming together to get that information out.”
To date, the Charlatan has published 12 articles about the 2018 CUSA elections, which include coverage of CUSA dropping the writ of election, the decision to implement ranked voting, and both the councillor and executive debates.
Fourth-year computer science student and founder of a campaign urging students to vote ‘no confidence,’ James Brunet, said he doesn’t believe it’s the Charlatan’s role to advertise elections.
“CUSA does have an obligation to notify its membership,” he said. “It’s not the job of the Charlatan.”
He said the elections weren’t advertised well last year either, but it wasn’t as much of an issue because the Charlatan published an article notifying students.
“Essentially, the Charlatan kind of filled the hole that CUSA didn’t fill last election,” Brunet said.
Masjedee said the university recently told CUSA they’d be able to access the undergraduate mailing list, meaning election advertisements can be sent to students’ Cmail accounts.
“That’s a huge game changer for us,” he said.
