The Martlet

According to the results of the 2010 UVic Students’ Society election, UVic undergraduate students were looking for a change when they headed to the polls last week.

Current UVSS director-at-large James Coccola was elected chairperson with 1,571 votes, surpassing the 1,286 votes current chairperson Veronica Harrison garnered.

Although votes were tallied for disqualified chairperson candidate Ryan Levis, they will be kept secret until the appeals process regarding his disqualification is complete.

Coccola’s slate, RENEW, faired well in the elections, securing three of the four executive positions and six of the 11 director-at-large seats.

RENEW’s Kelsey Hannan will be the next director of finance, while slate-mate Remy Hall will fill the director of services position.

Currently, Leah Staples from the Students United slate is set to fill the director of academics position. Staples beat out RENEW candidate and current director of academics Rajpreet Sall by three votes at the original count on March 5.

On March 9, the electoral office counted approximately 26 ballots from students who had lost the sticker on their student card, and whose voter registration had to be checked to make sure they had not voted twice. After those ballots had been counted, Staples’ lead had shrunk to a single vote.

Because the vote was so close, a mandatory recount was held on March 10. The results were not available as of press time.

UVSS Chief Electoral Officer Conrad Vanderkamp says that while there are still some outstanding co-op ballots, he doesn’t expect to see much change in the results after the recount.

He also noted that any candidate has the right to ask the UVSS electoral committee for a recount within seven days of the election results being announced, including the recount results.

“My guess is that there will be one more recount [after March 10],” said Vanderkamp. “The real, real final results may not be available for a couple of weeks, but I don’t see much shifting after.”

Nathan Warner will be the only returning director-at-large on next year’s UVSS board. He will be joined by fellow RENEW candidates José Barrios, Jenn Bowie, Laura MacLeod, Mehak Mehra and Karina Sangha.

Rounding out the board will be Caitlyn Pal, Tara Paterson and Dylan Sherlock from the Students United slate, and Justin Bedi and Geoff Sharpe from the slate Team Work.

The referendum question on whether or not students would support a fee increase to supplement the UVSS’ operations budget failed with 1,685 students voting against and 1,627 voting in favor.

Vanderkamp says that overall, the 2010 elections went well.

“I found all the candidates very civil and understanding of our policies and procedures and our judgments, even if they don’t always agree,” he said. “There’s really good processes in place now for people who might have questions or complaints. It all takes time, but it’s trusted, I think.”

The electoral office was kept on their toes this year. Vanderkamp says that the number of complaints they received this year was more than double that of last year’s campaign.

Voter turnout was also up, with approximately 3,425 students coming out to the polls, representing over 20 per cent of UVic’s population. Vanderkamp says he thinks turnout was higher because the campaign was so active this year.

“There were lots of different people involved, lots of good weather,” he said. “Good organization, some real issues … things that people could really grasp ahold of and say ‘OK, these are real things.’”

One thing Vanderkamp hopes will be reviewed in the future is the electoral policies governing online campaigning.

“I think we need a whole new look at how campaigns may be conducted so that it’s fair for everyone,” he said. “There’s going to have to be some pretty major rethinking over the next little while.”