For the results of a referendum to even be considered, at least 5% of the student body must vote. This translates to a total of about 2100 votes. Due to the fact that the SAC did a poor job of informing the students, the "bikechain" referendum was doomed from the get-go, wasting at least $24001 of the students' money.
When asked, most students - who had just walked right by a polling station - did not know there was a referendum happening, let alone that they had walked right by a polling station. Not only did most students not know that there was a referendum, but they were not in standard locations, and were poorly marked.
Sidney Smith, arguably the most popular location on campus for students to vote, couldn't be used because the SAC had picked the date for the referendum prior to checking whether the locations were available. In addition to this, of the polling stations that were used, they were often difficult to find because they were poorly marked. The Bahen Centre, and UC had no visible markings outside that indicated one could vote inside.
Although the SAC did meet the minimum requirements to inform the students about the election, with minimal effort the SAC could have directly informed every student of the referendum. The SAC uses email as their primary form of communication to touch base with students. This raises the important question of why they did not email students to inform them about this referendum.
With a generally apathetic student population, the SAC need not wonder why there was a poor turn out when they make voting more difficult than need be. It is time that the SAC updates its procedures for referendums and elections.
comments/critique? Send it to: comments@stumm.ca
1. calculated as follows:
(10 dollars/hour * 8 hours/day * 3 days * 2 students)/polling station * 5 polling stations = $2400
This only includes the money spent to man the polling stations. Additional costs ignored include, the time spent organizing the referendum by the SAC, printing the ballots, envelopes, counting the votes, etc.
