CSA says results are official, despite CFS’s call for a process to scrutinize results
Written by Daniel Bitonti
Students voted in droves and they made it clear what they wanted.
By a margin of 3713 votes, undergraduate students voted for the CSA to leave both the national and provincial components of the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), Canada’s largest student lobby.
After two weeks of campaigning by ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ organizers, a total of 7330 students voted from April 7-9 via online ballots in the referendum on continued membership, with 5388 students voting ‘No’ on continued membership, 1675 voting ‘Yes’ and 267 abstaining. Quorum had been set for 20 per cent of undergrads, approximately 3, 900 students.
According to Gavin Armstrong, the CSA’s communications and corporate affairs commissioner, it was the largest turnout for any CSA election or referendum.
“I am pleased that a record amount of students participated in the democratic process,” said Armstrong. “From what we can see, yes, it’s a record. It’s the largest turnout we’ve seen. We haven’t gone through all the books, but from our recollection, it is.”
University of Guelph students had been paying $3.30 per semester to the provincial component and $3.97 to the national component of the CFS.
But the six-moth saga that started in the fall with student petitions, and eventually saw the CSA fighting for a referendum in court, isn’t quite over yet.
On the evening of Friday, April 9, the results of the referendum were released to the CSA Board of Directors by Armstrong, and the following day they were leaked to the CSA-run website, thecannon.ca.
On Monday, April 11, the CSA released what Armstrong called “the official results,” posting them on the CSA’s website and sending them as a mass email to the undergraduate student body.
Armstrong told the Ontarion that the CFS is acting under the belief that the online system should be heavily scrutinized, and they are unwilling to accept the results until that scrutiny happens.
According to email transcripts between Gavin Armstrong and Lucy Watson obtained by the Ontarion, a CFS member of the Referendum Oversight Committee – the body charged with overseeing the referendum process which also includes two members of the CSA executive including Armstrong – the CSA Board of Directors was not supposed to have seen the results, nor were the results supposed to have been released to the student body when they were.
“On April 9, 2010 we unanimously agreed that the results would be embargoed until after the Referendum Oversight Committee meets on Monday to review the voter logs and other data supplied by the administration from the vote,” Watson wrote to Armstrong on Sunday, April 10. “It is highly irresponsible to make public results that are part of a process that has not yet been scrutinized,” Watson added in an email the following day. “Further, to my knowledge there is no obligation to release preliminary results to the CSA Board.”
On Monday, April 12, Watson reiterated the CFS’s position, saying that “the Federations remain opposed to releasing the results until they have been thoroughly scrutinized. We believe until a review confirms that there are no irregularities, it is premature to release the results.”
Watson was not available for comment. Katherine Giroux-Bougard, CFS national chairperson, would not comment on what a process of scrutinizing the results would look like, saying she has not yet received a report on the referendum from the ROC.
Armstrong believes that there was no agreement made at the ROC level stopping him from releasing the results to the board or to students.
“I have no problem with a review of the system and I have no problem with having a thorough look into what happened. I think that if there is an audit, it happens after the fact…They [CFS] feel that there needs to be a detailed level of scrutiny,” Armstrong said. “7330 participated in a referendum. They [Students] voted. They were engaged in the campaign. They have a right to know what the results are when they are available.
“The referendum ended Friday at 8 p.m. and Monday morning, [students] should have had the results, whether they were audited or not. We should not have to sit around for a week while they become reviewed and the students wait and wait to see.”
Armstrong added that a third party would be responsible for scrutinizing the results, looking into “very technical things” in the online voting process, including firewall codes and bounce backs.
Before the CSA is officially out of the CFS, the Federation needs to accept the results of the referendum and the CSA’s request to leave within, 90 days. If this happens, the CFS membership, comprised of members of various student governments from across the country, will vote on the CSA’s request at the CFS’s
annual general meeting in November.
Loading ...
