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After an eventful campaign period, Filomena Tassi was elected as the Member of Parliament representing the area around and including McMaster University.
With a turnout of over 60,000 voters in the newly created Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas riding, Tassi is part of a returning wave of support for the Liberal Party, a party that has been conspicuously absent in representing Hamilton at the federal level for the past nine years.
The Liberal Party achieved a historic victory this October, reaching a parliamentary majority with 184 out of 338 seats, ousting the previous Conservative majority government. The Liberals now represent two of the five Hamilton ridings, with Tassi in the HWAD riding and Bob Bratina, former mayor of Hamilton, representing the Hamilton East-Stoney Creek riding.
Since 2006, Conservative MP David Sweet had represented McMaster University in the now defunct Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Westdale district. With Sweet running for and winning the new Flamborough-Glanbrook district, the battle amongst candidates in the HWAD riding was expected to be far more open without an incumbent involved in the race.
Despite this, Tassi won with 29,698 votes, a comfortable margin of nearly 10,000 votes over her closest competition, Conservative candidate Vincent Samuel.
In an election defined by voters desperate for change, it seemed apparent that strategic voting helped shape the outcome of the riding. However, it’s arguable that Tassi’s large margin of victory was also in part due to the criticism that NDP candidate Alex Johnstone faced over comments she made regarding the Auschwitz concentration camp. Although candidates declined to comment on the issue during the race, Johnstone’s absence from her campaign to visit the camp, as well as an absence from the All-Candidates debate hosted in McMaster’s student atrium, contributed to a fairly straightforward result that was expected to be much closer between all three parties.
With some of the Liberal Party’s key promises directed towards student tuition and the transition to the workforce, students can expect to see some direct benefits from Trudeau’s government. This includes a grace period for loan repayments until a graduate is earning a minimum income of $25,000, and the investment of $1.3 billion over three years in the creation of new co-op placements for students in science, technology, and business, as well as over 40,000 youth jobs.
Although it’s unclear how much students will be able to save by simply delaying their loan payments to the government, or what exactly Trudeau’s “youth jobs” will entail, Tassi emphasized the importance of students to the Liberal party’s plans in a previous conversation with The Silhouette.
“We’re just trying to bridge the gap from education to work,” said Tassi. “They’re saying the average student debt is $26,000; this is why we want to work with students to try and ensure that the cost of going to school is lowered, and that when they graduate they won’t have to repay [right away].”
Unfortunately, Tassi did not respond to The Silhouette’s request for an interview in time for the print issue.
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By: Chukky Ibe
The Student Representative Assembly is too small. Decisions made by a small sample of people are likely to be skewed because of the outlier effect, meaning that if there is one biased member of the sample — in this case the SRA — it can directly affect the outcome of an election. If 35 people are selected to reflect the opinion of the student body, one outlier, one person who votes for their partner or friend, does not read platforms or decides not to listen to debates, will directly affect the outcomes of any election. Simple behavioural psychology reveals that it is easier to trust people you know. It is easier to believe people you have relationships with, and it is much harder to identify you have a bias toward them. Our current VP Finance was elected by a difference of one vote, which highlights some vulnerability in our system.
The 35 SRA members represent 21,000 McMaster undergrads. A scientific sample of the general population of Mac undergrads requires 10 percent or 2,100 people to claim scientific validity. The current system asks for 35 people or 0.0017 percent of the population. The system is deeply, methodologically flawed. Any decision that comes out of it cannot claim to be a valid representation of the student population. I concede that an election is not a scientific experiment, but it is not revolutionary to ask for a system based on mathematic principles, one which does not solely hinge on the altruism of strangers who are elected to represent people they will never meet.
The representative powers of the SRA are not absolute. We know this because the SRA does not vote for the MSU President and incoming SRA members. We recognise there are limits to representative democracy. This is why the MSU constitution defines the General Assembly, a direct democratic forum, as its highest space of governance. Students vote for the MSU president and the SRA officials, and this does not make the SRA less representative. It defers representative elections to the highest governing student body — the students. This deference reduces the outlier effect as it broadens the sample size. Any numbers larger than the 35 SRA members we currently have further reduces the outlier effect and the margin of error. A larger sample would mean that SRA members still get to vote, but it also opens voting to part-time managers, service volunteers, faculty representatives, welcome week reps, and club members. As an assembly member, I must empower my constituents to vote and not make excuses why they should not.
The next conversation to have is one of the logistics. If this is the greatest challenge, then we must support our elections committee as they find collaborative solutions. Timelines can be adjusted to optimize our combined democratic model. VP elections can be moved to the end of March, and we can adopt a debate model with time limits as recommended by the VP reform committee. This draws from the strengths of the representative and direct elections to optimize our democracy. This means successful candidates will have extra weeks of transition with their predecessors, and the SRA has fewer meetings during the exam periods. A class talk schedule that rotates according to faculty, so you do not have all candidates going to one class at the same time, and no one has an undue advantage. Candidates can also table-share to maximise traffic flow in the student centre.
The ideas I present in this short article are not solely mine but are a synthesis of conversations I had with 23 students who are not involved in student politics. More than anything, while talking to them, I was reminded that the people we serve will make rational decisions when they have the information they need. They must be treated with dignity and respect. By increasing the number of people who vote, we reduce the mathematical errors present in our current VP electoral system.
Photo Credit: Eliza Pope
With elections taking place during reading week, we are using this week’s issue to share as much as we can with you about candidates and knowing your options.
For myself, and many other students, this will be my first time voting in a federal election. I have voted in provincial and municipal elections before, but this will be my first time approaching the beast that is our national electoral system.
As someone who is ready to see our current overlord shimmied out of his current throne, I am making sure that before I go to the polling stations this year, I am informed, aware, and prepared to vote strategically. There has been a large amount of discussion this year about our ability as voters to create the change we want by voting in or out certain parties, and using majority voting tactics in swing ridings to ensure one progressive party receives the majority of votes, instead of having them evenly split across the spectrum and going to the wayside with not enough support.
Our current first-past-the-post system allows for a party to win with a minimum of 34 percent of the votes when split between three parties. This means the two remaining parties could receive up to 33 percent of the vote each, but that one percent would make the difference.
My priority as a citizen, and as a student, is to elect one of the progressive parties that can create meaningful changes for students, education and job prospects, among many other issues.
In the 2008 federal election, a website called strategicvoting.ca identified 68 districts where the combined progressive vote was greater than that of the Conservatives. Meaning there were overall more votes for left wing parties, but the votes were split in a way that made them each negligible.
If the method of strategic voting was followed at that time, we would currently have a minority progressive government.
If you live in a swing riding, look online to see which progressive party has the highest chance of being elected, and if you support the difference this could make, use your vote to count towards that, instead of falling into an almost even split between parties.
As McMaster students alone, we account for thousands of potential voters. It is important that we use this position wisely in order to incite change where we see it fit. In this month’s issue, both our News and Opinion sections look at ways students can benefit from each party’s platform. And while the point of this whole article is to emphasize the importance of strategic voting, it is even more important to know who you’re voting for, and how they can make a difference to you — that’s the real strategy behind voting.
By: Chris Litfin
Who are we voting for?
Perhaps you’ve heard that there are municipal elections in Ontario on Oct. 27. You may have noticed the plethora of lawn signs, the people in suits knocking on your door, or the three-ring circus that is Toronto’s mayoral race. If you haven’t, you aren’t completely to blame.
Not only does the municipal election get very little play on the major media outlets, there are no less than six distinct races in each ward: Mayor, Ward Councillor, and Trustees for the English Public, English Catholic, French Public, and French Catholic School Boards. Even for dedicated watchers of local politics, it’s enough to make your head spin.
Hamilton’s municipal government is made up of one mayor, 15 councillors each representing a ward, and an army of bureaucrats. You get to vote for the mayor (one of twelve candidates) and one of the ward councillors. McMaster is in Ward 1, which includes everything west of Queen street and east of Dundas below the escarpment, so unless you commute, you will be voting for one of the six candidates for Ward 1 councillor.
Why should you care about Hamilton politics if you are from, say, Vancouver? Simply put, after McMaster, the City of Hamilton is the organisation you interact with the most on a daily basis. Want more buses late at night? Want the bike lanes on Sterling plowed during the winter? How about a program to make sure that the student house you rented from that sketchy landlord is actually safe? All of those things are municipal responsibilities.
The school board trustees are where it starts to get complicated. As a legacy of confederation back in 1867, most areas in Ontario are covered by four distinct school boards. Thing is, you only get to vote for one of them; which one you vote for depends on whether you have “education rights” for something other than the English Public School Board. Long story short, unless you went to a Catholic/French/French Catholic high school, probably don’t have “education rights” and so will be defaulted to the English Public School Board.
In any event, in Ward 1 there are five candidates running for the English Public School Board and two for each of the others. If you think that the race for School Board Trustee is unimportant compared to Mayor or Councillor, you are dead wrong. Think about it: roughly 90 percent of you are a product of Ontario’s education system. Didn’t like something about your experience? Now’s your chance to do something about it.
The sad fact is that university students often don’t vote: for proof, just look at the dismal turnout for many of the elections held on campus. But there is a bigger problem here than the fact that university students are apathetic. As far as politicians are concerned, if you don’t vote, you don’t exist. Why should they spend time on some student-friendly initiative when they won’t see any benefit from it on election day? Aside from all the doing-one’s-civic-duty rhetoric, it’s in your own self-interest to vote. On Oct. 27, let’s all be self-interested and take the ten minutes to put three Xs on a piece of paper.
Some students eagerly participate in elections in a partisan way by going door to door or campaigning through social media. Other students earn money by working for Elections Ontario as a Poll Clerk or Information Assistant. But when it comes to voting, it is well-known that students are one of the demographics with the lowest voter turnout for both provincial and federal elections, with only 2 out of every 5 eligible 18-24 year olds casting a ballot in the last federal election.
What is being done about it?
To combat voter apathy, the MSU has created the MacVotes campaign, aiming to both educate and engage students wishing to vote in any riding. MSU Vice President (Education), Rodrigo Narro-Perez explained, “We want students to vote regardless of where they are, whether it’s here in Hamilton or back home anywhere across Ontario.”
The MacVotes website includes a video summary of local candidate platforms and a series of FAQs for students wanting to participate in the election. On May 28, the MSU also hosted an all-candidates (from the Ancaster-Flamborough-Dundas-Westdale riding) debate on campus that was live-streamed by the Silhouette 15 days before the election. As Narro-Perez explains “the summer time is an obvious barrier but we have focused our efforts through social media to compensate”. Though the campaign is dynamic and presents a useful guide for students to vote, it is unclear whether these types of campaigns are enough to get students to actually register on the voters list and go to their local polling station to vote on election day.
The apathetic province
Ontario in particular seems to have an epidemic of voter fatigue. Less than half of eligible Ontario residents voted in the last provincial election. Dr. Katherine Boothe, a McMaster political science professor, describes how theorists like Mancur Olson (1971) argue this problem stems from the nature of democracy, “rational individuals know that their potentially significant effort to contribute to a collective or public good (like saving the environment or electing a government) will only advance the cause a small degree, and they will share the benefits whether they contribute or not”, which is coined by social scientists as the “collective action problem”.
Voting campaigns targeting youth might not provide sufficient incentive to overcome this problem. As Dr. Boothe said “recent research by Goodman (2012) suggests that young voters’ changing perceptions of citizenship and civic duty have an important role in their willingness to participate – and you probably can’t affect those with more convenient polling places or better buttons.”
The challenges of navigating the voting system are exacerbated by the Elections Ontario website. As McMaster student Sara King explains, the website is difficult to navigate “The website is problematic, it’s very hard to find what you’re looking for and the explanations are very confusing.”
Furthermore, the youth section in particular contains no compelling information or any attempt to address issues that youth in particular may face when it comes to voting, like voting in their University riding versus their home riding. As King said “The youth section is a joke”.
The initiative must be yours
If you are 18 years or older on election day, a Canadian citizen and a resident of Ontario, you can vote in the provincial election and you can choose which riding to vote in, whether that be McMaster’s riding or a home riding. However, it will be up to each individual to take the initiative to vote. Despite the MacVotes campaign, the lackluster Elections Ontario programming raises the question of how many students will end up turning out on June 12.
The MSU presidential debate on Monday, Jan. 27 marked the final opportunity for candidates to publicly present their case to voters and attempt to shift the balance.
No new promises were made, but the tone of the debate was more critical than last week's debate. While Brodka and Saull seemed to be frontrunners in the first debate on Thursday, Jan 23, some candidates emerged at Monday's debate as thoughtful and well-spoken contenders, particularly Russell.
Russell impressive
Of all candidates, Russell looked the most comfortable in front of viewers and, by far, sounded the least scripted.
When asked who they think deserves second place, every candidate, except herself, said that Russell would get their vote if they weren’t running.
Though Russell was personable, she had very little time to answer questions about her own platform and explain to voters they ought to support it. Most of her time was spent questioning other candidates and handing them a chance to elaborate on their own platforms.
Russell stayed poised as all of the candidates went after the early leaders—Saull and Brodka. While candidates interrogated Saull and Brodka, Russell shone as likeable and fairly unopposed. She closed saying "I'm asking for your vote if maybe you haven't felt heard before, if maybe you've felt that your lens doesn't matter. I'm asking for your vote if you've ever felt like you needed more support."
Ali and Wolwowicz improve
Israa Ali and Jason Wolwowicz both had their work cut out for them after an underwhelming performances in the first debate.
Ali clearly presented herself as the non-status-quo candidate. She also drew on personal experience while talking to the audience and spoke about being overlooked and underestimated as a Muslim women who wears a Hijab.
"It was brought to my attention that, because I wear the Hijab, or this head scarf, I'm not as appealing to the student population as the rest of the candidates are, and I may not even win or have a chance," said Ali. "I am a student just like you and I have struggles just like you."
Her confidence showed improvement and she referenced her MSU experience more heavily than before.
Wolwowicz was a strong speaking presence in this debate and was able to remain concise. Wolwowicz, in this debate, showed himself as researched and smart but still held on to his theme of leaving big decisions up to the student body.
"Engaging the student community more is key. Students have fantastic ideas. The MSU really only sees success because of student ideas...Services were implemented because they were student ideas at some point," said Wolwowicz.
Brodka and Saull staying afloat
Saull remained relatively likeable but did not improve much from the first debate and Brodka kept his remarks vague and wordy, trying to keep his reputation as the knowledgeable candidate.
Brodka and Saull politely battled each other for most of the debate, attempting to poke holes in the other’s platform. Neither of them was more impressive than the other and they both neglected to opportunity to criticize Russell or make any meaningful pleas to voters.
Brodka attacked Saull's off-campus security plan, citing redundancies or possible lack of demand.
"I just have a lot of questions about a variety of sub-points... if there's a demand for this," said Brodka. "For example, 'an increased police presence.' I know the University already pays up to $200,000* on specialized policing surrounding the University, so I just have a lot of questions."
Saull, again, was critical of Brodka's freedom credit point, saying it hadn't been researched properly.
"You had a consultation with a Dean, who said it worked. If you call a Dean and ask how his pilot project went, I think that that would be a biased sample," said Saull.
It seemed as though they were each just trying to hold on.
Voting time
Online voting opened Tuesday, Jan. 28 at 9 a.m. and will close on Thursday, Jan. 30 at 5 p.m. Students eligible to vote are registered in 18 units or more and should receive a code to vote at mcmaster.simplyvoting.com.
*number clarified later on Twitter
For the first time in a long time, there’s a lot of interest in higher-level University elections. Five candidates are competing to be your next University Planning Committee undergraduate representative. I find this really exciting. And so should you.
The role of the University Planning Committee in greater University governance is a critical one — but often unknown or underrated by students who are exclusively caught up in McMaster Students Union politics.
What is perhaps unknown to such students is that major academic and financial issues that MSU representatives promise to attend to are all under the ultimate jurisdiction of larger governing bodies. Decisions relating to tuition, academic programs, budgeting, etc. all must be approved by the Senate, the Board of Governers, the University Planning Committee, or all three.
True to its name, the University Planning Committee deals primarily with academic planning and the management of University resources. It also acts as an advisory board to the senior administration of the University.
UPC is a joint committee of the Senate and BoG and is unique to McMaster; other schools with the bicameral system that Mac has do not have the equivalent of UPC.
With such significant issues on the table — and a hefty budget along with it — the one seat that undergraduate students (full-time, part-time and continuing students) are allotted should be filled by the right person.
Undergrads should take the time to inform themselves, and vote accordingly.
Jordan Cole
Honours CMST & Multimedia, and
Political Science, Level II
Why should students care about UPC elections?
I feel students should always be interested in the future of education, and that is what the UPC is. The student voice is what will help shape not only the experiences of future generations, but the school’s atmosphere itself.
Why are you running for UPC Undergrad rep?
I am running for UPC undergrad rep because I have had multiple experiences to not only share the student voice, but to stand up and protect it from interests that do not have it in mind. I want our future to be secured and protected by one of us.
Why are you the best person for the job?
I am the best person for this job for one reason: interest. Without an interest in future university planning we will not have the same environment within our school that we are used to, interest is what drives passion, and that is what I will bring to this position.
Gabriel Cicchi
Honours Commerce
Level IV
Why should students care about UPC elections?
The UPC elections are vital to McMaster students as the committee discusses specific aspects of student life (academics and their allocated resources).
Why are you running for UPC Undergrad rep?
As I enter my fourth year at McMaster, the education I have experienced has given me a clear understanding of what needs to continue, start, and stop happening.
Why are you the best person for the job?
I am a multifaceted student who’s passion, motivation, and achievement oriented persona makes me an ideal candidate for this position.
Chantal Labonté
Honours Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour, Level IV
Why should students care about UPC elections?
These elections allow undergraduate students to have a voice in all the planning that the university undergoes, this directly affects their education and experience at McMaster.
Why are you running for UPC Undergrad rep?
The McMaster community has given me so much in my time here, I want to give back and make the experience better for my peers and future students.
Why are you the best person for the job?
As a fourth year student, I have been involved in a variety of things on campus (academic, clubs, faculty societies, residence), these well-rounded experiences will allow me to effectively represent a large amount of students on a variety of important topics.
Rahi Turab
Life Sciences
Level I
Why should students care about UPC elections?
Students should care about UPC elections because the entire undergraduate class only gets one representative to be their voice in the UPC, which makes it even more of a shame when so few people actually vote.
Why are you running for UPC Undergrad rep?
I am running for UPC undergrad rep because I saw the call for candidates in the Silhouette and realized that if no one else was going to run, as an able first year, I have a responsibility to try and represent my undergraduate class.
Why are you the best person for the job?
I believe I am the best person for the job because I have experience working in many clubs and committees along with an interest in how planning and administration works for the students at McMaster.
Ken Seville
Social Sciences
Continuing Education
Why should students care about UPC elections?
UPC decisions affect all aspects of your university experience. As a joint committee of Senate (academic) and the Board of Governors (financial), the UPC is the senior planning body of the university and is responsible for ensuring that academic and financial planning are congruent when recommending McMaster’s nearly $1 billion annual budget.
Why are you running for UPC Undergrad rep?
I have prior experience as an elected representative on both the SRA and MAPS and wish to step up to university wide representation.
Why are you the best person for the job?
The task of representing the diverse interests of all undergrads is too big for one person. To overcome this problem I have developed a web based technology called Democravise, that facilitates university wide consultation with all undergraduate stakeholder groups, including the MSU, SOCS, and MAPS. This unique technology was developed at Mac and ensures all critical questions are asked before decisions are made.
Kacper Niburski / Silhouette Staff
I don’t vote.
I have neither registered as a voter nor do I plan to. I tell myself it’s to avoid the pangs of jury duty later on in my life where I’ll have to listen to the doddering tales of unpaid parking tickets and minor misdemeanors, but I think it’s something much more horrifying than some civilized game of hookie.
If I were to guess at the underlying reason for my failure to participate in the democratic process, I would point to JFK’s 1961 inauguration speech.
Before his brain became nothing more than a scattershot of ground beef, he prophetically heralded the doom of democracy, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
Though these words seem to ring at the very core of political pundits, I think that we may have asked too much. Because in between an assurance of consistent political platforms, cries for transparency, and a desire for egalitarian policies meant to last years into the future, democracy has died.
Whether it is because of indifference, apathy, or general distrust of a nation, I am not sure. Maybe democracy was just a craze no better than the hula-hoop.
But what I do know for certain is that whatever remains, whatever democracy has devolved into, is the gross, general belief founded on individual incompetence and laziness.
At a minimum, it has become a way of herding minds to think, act, and behave in a way that alienates some people and defines others. At best, it is mob mentality.
As voters and civilians, we subscribe ourselves to platforms that are as phony and short-lived as the smiles behind them. Each year, it is the same. We are hammered with ideas left and right: This politician failed to reform the Consensus like he said he would. That one supported gay marriage but now doesn’t. And there’s the politician who ate bacon for breakfast. We are overloaded with what to think, what to say, and what to feel, and so in resistance, we often feel nothing at all.
It was Oscar Wilde who said, “Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of people by the people for the people;” and like him, we have been hit too often.
We have become numb. Brain-dead. We believe everything. We believe nothing. And we accept both as valid options in a world that makes as little sense as this one.
I’m sure there was a time when democracy, however vaguely that word can be used, meant something. Jump back to white hair, red coats and puffy hats, and you’ll find that it signified that the sum was greater than any one part of its whole, that humanity reclaimed the freedom they were born into, and we weren’t running a circus – our circus – from the audience stands. Back then, we were the lions themselves. The center of the show. The main act. And our roar, when expressed freely, meant something.
Nowadays surrounded by corruption and inconsistency, our cries are muffled under the hardened pillows of the very institution we have helped build. Instead of lions, we have become kittens that meow. We have become nothing short of pussies.
That is not to say any political system is better than democracy, as Winston Churchill famously said.
My parents remind me of this daily, as they retell their angst filled tales of socialism. I will never know their hunger for freedom. Nor will I understand what it means to be jailed for expressing my opinions and being shot at for others. I’m lucky and cursed in that respect.
But they, too, grumble. I see the dissatisfaction in their faces each election.
I see the indifferent shrugs for this candidate or that. To them, though they don’t say it, democracy was a way to null the pain of socialism. Over here, they were finally granted the choice of any drug prescribed to them, whether it was the Conservatives or Liberals or any other party affiliation. But in the end, they all remained just that: drugs.
Like an atheist who invariably dresses up for his funeral, my parents were forced into a system because there were no other options.
That is not freedom. That is coercion. That is democracy.
I know, I know: I don’t vote, so how can I begin even contemplating a political discourse on democracy? How can I, a person who does not participate in the democratic process, complain?
It’s simple because I think the opposite is true: by voting, one can’t complain.
They get what they voted for; that is, a certainty that the governance they receive is no better than what they believe they are entitled to. If I did the same – if I voted – I would be legitimizing the exact failings I am trying to avoid.
But if everyone didn’t vote, would that make it any better? Probably not.
I’m not claiming I have a solution, as any town crier would admit.
Instead, I am claiming that democracy has become a disease, and that may even be insulting to disease.
Because at least a disease ensures to take care of its own kind, and like most people, I can’t help the sickening feeling that I have been left behind at the ballot box.
For the MSU, paper balloting is a thing of the past.
It’s been that way since 2011, and the students union intends to keep using Simply Voting, a digital balloting software that the MSU used in the last presidential election.
“We’ve seen an increase in voter turnout over the past couple of years,” said Steven Thompson, chief returning officer for the MSU’s elections department. “Online voting helps with that. It’s more convenient since there are no crazy line-ups. It also saves [the MSU] money and is more secure.”
Voter turnout at McMaster was at an all-time low in 2009. Only about 13 per cent of the student body casted ballots that year. The number nearly doubled the following year, reaching 22 per cent.
Voter apathy among students has been a long-standing challenge in universities across the country. At the University of Manitoba, voter turnout has averaged about 10 per cent. Queen’s University, with some of the higher turnouts in Ontario, has had more than 30 per cent of its student body vote in each of the past five years.
The MSU hoped to engage more students when it introduced online voting in its 2011 election, using UTS’s MacVote software. They switched to Simply Voting last year, and turnout rose to 33.4 per cent – the highest in a decade.
But online voting doesn’t always run smoothly.
Some McMaster students didn’t receive e-mails with voting passwords last election, even with multiple emails sent.
“I believe there were about a couple hundred e-mails that bounced last year,” said Thompson. “We re-sent e-mails to those who may not have received them, but some people just had full inboxes.”
Although 200 people doesn’t seem like a huge number, it’s worth noting that David Campbell, who’s running again this year, lost by only 47 votes to Siobhan Stewart in 2012.
That election took place before the mass Mac email system switchover from MUSS to Gmail. Thompson explained that limited storage space was the main cause of some technical glitches, adding that the MSU doesn’t anticipate any this year.
A more serious online voting malfunction happened earlier this week at the University of British Columbia, whose students union also use Simply Voting.
An overloaded e-mail server on the voting system resulted in 1,171 students not being able to vote for their board of governors and senate for more than 24 hours. A makeup ballot has since been made available.
At McMaster, online polling will open on Jan. 29 at 9 a.m., about three hours before the all-candidates debate hosted by the MSU.
While there will be no voting booths, laptops will be stationed in the Student Centre from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. from Jan. 29 to 31.
