Chief returning officer: “The results didn’t change”
Stacey Goyan
News Editor
While Mike Snoddon was able to walk away the victor in the LUSU presidential election on Friday, February 12th, but he did not do it by much.
Snoddon edged out Kolic in an extremely close race, winning by a mere 10 votes. Snoddon held an 18% lead over fellow presidential candidate, Dan Zeleny.
Neva Bassingthwaite claimed the Vice President Student Issues position with a 31% lead over contender Sara Mackie. Chris Vaillant of Orillia took home the Vice President Finance election with a 5% gap between himself and Jay Stapleton, and roughly 7% more than Edward A. Paddock.
Orillia also overwhelmingly supported the proposed universal bus pass. The future of the Orillia U-Pass now rests on Orillia city council’s decision to upgrade their bus service. The referendum had a 24% voter turnout, while the executive election brought in only 14%.
Due to the small margin between Snoddon and Kolic, Chief Returning Officer, Tomas Valiquette says that a recount was needed to verify the results, as required by the Lakehead University Student Union constitution.
Kolic, however, conceded the race, leaving Snoddon the victor.
Valiquette says that the recount needed to take place anyway.
“It still had to happen as a legality,” said the CRO. The LUSU constitution requires that a recount must take place with a voting margin of 2% or less.
After the official results were released, some students began to suspect the high rate of spoiled ballots reported. In all races over 20% of the ballots were deemed spoiled and invalid.
In some races, over 200 ballots were considered spoiled. Some students criticized the CRO’s checkmark only policy as being too strict.
Valiquette said in an interview on Friday that a recount has been done and the results have not changed.
“There was no discrepancy between the totals that we had Friday night (February 12th) and the totals of the recount,” said Valiquette.
“The funny part about this is with the “X” ballots, we actually kept track of what they were and even if we did count “X” ballots, the results didn’t change. The people that won [actually] won.”
Otherwise, Valiquette says that that the integrity of the elections committee should be respected.
This year’s ballot count was limited to only individuals designated to scrutinise the ballot counting and those actually counting ballots. Valiquette says that the night of the ballot count was social but also productive.
So what accounts for the over 20% spoilage rate? Valiquette says that some students just don’t want to vote, or at least not for a candidate.
“Part of it is people who are just spoiling their ballots for the fun of it.” The CRO said that some ballots circled the word ‘abstain’; however, any markings on the ballot other than an X resulted in a spoiled ballot. An abstention on a ballot would be a blank ballot.
Other ballots were clearly spoiled with markings or write in names.
The results of the election have been acclaimed and await ratification from the board of directors. The CRO felt that it was one of the fairest elections on campus and that there should be no issues with ratification.
“If there is any problem with the ratification, the student union should lose faith in the board.”