The Martlet

The UVSS elections are coming to a climactic close this week, and there’s only a short time left until we find out who our new elected officials will be this coming year — or so we think.

With campaign shenanigans and election complaints potentially causing disqualification for various candidates, it could be days after the results are in before we find out who the true (or the default) winners really are.

Before campaigning even started last month, one candidate, Ali Lee of Team BANG, was disqualified for pre-campaigning. Since things got underway, there have been a cross-section of complaints ranging from accusations of campaigning just minutes too early, to postering on painted surfaces (not allowed by the university), to posters exceeding size limitations, to handbills sitting in a pile as opposed to being handed out according to regulation.

However, Chief Electoral Officer Conrad Vanderkamp says that no candidates have faced disqualification since campaigning started, though there have been a few warnings. Yet this year’s grumbles are nothing out of the ordinary, and Vanderkamp says the dozen or so formal complaints that have come in so far are to be expected — that’s not to say they’re all merited, or that some aren’t just from cranky candidates trying to get a leg up on the competition. Everybody plays by the same rules, says Vanderkamp. But do they really?

Independent chair candidate Ryan Levis was accused of violating poster regulations with his large staked signs popping up all around campus, while Team YES was criticized for campaigning via a publication when an article in the last issue of the Martlet about paperless campaigning exposed the team’s use of apples instead of flyers.

However, each candidate gets $25 per person to campaign in any way they see fit (and slates are allowed to pool their funds). Since Levis’ wooden-stick and paper posters are under the $25 limit, he’s home free. And since the Martlet article was about campaigning paperlessly, not about the YES team, the electoral office deemed them innocent too.

Complaints are kept anonymous (there goes accountability out the window), and it isn’t always possible to find or charge the offenders (like some students who committed a major offence by tearing down a swath of Team FAST posters in various locations around campus). But the candidates who are accused do have to answer for the complaints against them — a charged minor offence results in a “slap on the wrist” warning, while a major offence could result in immediate disqualification.

But while someone like Levis could have received a minor offence for his postering tendencies (five warnings result in a disqualification), if the complaint against Team YES was successful it would have resulted in a major offence, equalling instant disqualification. Simple enough.

But the ugly wrinkle here could be found in the complaint and appeal process. Initial complaints are first taken to the deputy electoral officers, then the chief electoral officer to be ruled on. Yet if an accuser (or the accused) is unsatisfied with what the chief decides, the decision can be appealed by taking that complaint to the Electoral Committee of the UVSS, then the UVSS Board of Directors. Seems logical — except when you consider the committee is comprised of current board members Tracy Ho, Stafford Richter and Gary Dawson-Quatell — or that appealing to the board of directors would mean appealing to a collection of Team FAST members. Does anyone else smell that conflict of interest?

Apparently the stench is so ripe, that the current board moved to present an alternate bylaw at a general board meeting earlier in the year to create an independent complaints committee. But the meeting didn’t make quorum, and the bylaw lost its chance. Seems like a pertinent time to try again, kids.

Vanderkamp said that as the chief electoral officer most of the complaints have stopped with him, but one complaint about pre-campaigning is undergoing the appeal process. That means, if the complaint is sucessful, an elected member of the board could be disqualified after being voted in — but then again, maybe not. It all comes down to what (or who) is fair.

“The referee’s job is not to find fault, but to keep the game going,” Vanderkamp said. “Whenever possible, you interpret the regulations to keep things fluid.”

And fluid is how we can only hope the “games” will stay until we secure a system that’s a little less controversial, and a little more just.