Looking at the numbers behind the CSA elections

Student engagement is rising at the University of Guelph

The Central Student Association (CSA) released the unofficial results of the 2017 general election on March 9 after a campaign that received a greater amount of media coverage than is usually given to student union elections.

While the added media attention could have contributed to a larger voter turnout, the numbers for the 2017 election, as well as the results of the fall 2016 by-election, can be interpreted to show that undergraduate student involvement with the CSA is on the rise.

In all levels of government, voter engagement has been an issue and this extends to student elections at the University of Guelph.

According to the results posted on the CSA’s social media accounts, 21 per cent of undergraduates voted in the 2017 general election. In comparison, 14.7 per cent of the membership cast a ballot in the 2016 election, indicating a seven per cent increase this year.

The highest voter engagement in the past year, however, was in the fall 2016 by-election which saw 23 per cent of the CSA membership cast a ballot.Discussions surrounding this year’s general election focused heavily on the campaign of presidential candidate Jay Rojas.

During the voting period, a number of news articles published between 2011 and 2014 resurfaced on Overheard at Guelph which profiled Rojas’s previous criminal convictions, including theft, breaking and entering, mischief to data, and trafficking in stolen goods.

Rojas was not elected as president of the CSA with 2065 votes against, 1962 votes in favour, and 423 members declining their vote. A by-election will be held in the fall semester to select a president for the 2017 to 2018 academic year.

 

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Emily Vance, the current commissioner of external affairs and vice president student experience elect, discussed the increase in undergraduate participation, specifically the increase of nominees for executive positions, during the election season.

“Having a hierarchical structure with a president and VP positions, it seems like a structure that might make more sense to people,” Vance said.

“In terms of knowledge, it may be something that people can understand more of what a VP is in comparison to a commissioner. The CSA is doing a lot of things and people want to get involved.”

In comparison to last year’s election, where four commissioner positions were elected uncontestedand the local affairs position had no candidates, the 2017 election had only one uncontested position and three candidates running for vice president external.

The difficulty in comparing the statistics from last year’s election to the those of the recent election stems from the uncontested nature of the 2016 election campaign.Last year, each candidate was elected to their position by a massive percentage of the voting membership, with both academic and university affairs commissioner Meghan Wing and finance and operations commissioner Ryan Shoot receiving 76 per cent of the vote, but the overall number of students was significantly smaller.

There have been five referendum questions posed to the undergraduate membership in the past year: three on the 2016 ballot, one during the fall by-election, and one this year. Of the five questions asked, the three included in the 2016 election were not able to reach quorum, and the question regarding the undergraduate bus pass had to be reopened.

For a referendum question to be passed, 20 per cent of the overall undergraduate membership is required to cast a ballot, and with only 14 per cent voting in 2016, neither questions were passed.

An inability to reach quorum also put the undergraduate bus pass into jeopardy when the referendum question was asked in 2016. Since the beginning of this academic year, both referendum questions included on the by-election ballot and the general election ballot were able to reach quorum, and were also passed by the membership.

The 2017 question, which was concerned with whether students would support an increase of $0.90 to their student fees so that menstrual products may be distributed on campus for the fall 2017 semester, passed with 3427 votes in favour.

At this time, the results for the 2017 general election are still tentatively unofficial. The results must be presented to the CSA board of directors and ratified at an upcoming meeting before they are official for the next academic year.

Photo courtesy of Eric Bailey via CC0.

Editors Note: The article originally stated that there was only two referendum questions on the 2016 ballot,when there was actually an additional  question regarding the bus passes asked in the 2016 election. The necessary corrections have been made to the article