There is an election going on. You inform yourself, listen to the arguments, and vote. Then, the votes are counted and the results are released. The candidate with the highest number of votes wins. That’s how a democratic election should work—and at every level of our Canadian democracy, that’s how an election does work.
That’s not how an election works at the Students’ Administrative Council at U of T. Here’s how we do it at the school that has graduated more prime ministers than any other in the country. You inform yourself, listento the arguments, and vote. An elections commission of SAC directors is convened to hear election complaints—they reject some, and approve others, levying penalties against candidates who break the rules. Then, the votes are counted and the results are released. The candidate with the highest number of votes wins, temporarily. At a SAC meeting, the results of the elections commission are overturned and the penalties are increased, decreased—whatever. A candidate who is disqualified ends up having his or her job taken by his or her opponent, and don’t worry about asking the voters what they think.
This year’s election was a farce and a sham, despite the best efforts of the very committed students who were running the election and hearing complaints, and despite a record 14 per cent voter turnout.
The elections code is written with an almost Platonic ideal of what an election should be, which does not exist in real life. “Facts” are determined by the elections committee and SAC directors, as if there is some sort of Olympian god who can determine, high above the clouds covering King’s College Circle, what is true and what is false in a politicized election. Election posters have to be a mandated distance apart from each other, and there are some locations that can be postered, while others must remain inviolate. Equally absurd is the torturous definition of “arms-length parties” and other nonsense: the elections commission stipulates that when someone affiliated with a candidate in some nebulous way does something, the candidate is fully responsible. This leads to a ridiculous amount of bickering over who knew whom, and who was responsible for what. This newspaper had to defend itself against a ridiculous charge that it had become a “non-arm’s-length party,” and only a considerable amount of arm-twisting saved us from wrongly being considered part of the story we seek to cover.
When a candidate violates these rules, he or she is violating the responsibility to play fair—rules, even silly rules, should be obeyed. But the end result of these election rules (which we acknowledge were created in the wake of a particularly nasty election some years ago) is to create a system where the university campus is a zone where the right to free speech is more constrained than elsewhere. It is also a campus where second-guessing and bickering over whose poster went where means more than a clear electoral majority. This is bad for democracy.
In an election, candidates may lie, or cover up posters, or have their friends pull dirty tricks on others. But U of T boasts several great newspapers, every candidate has a website, and the laws of Canada vigorously protect people from libel or slander. Candidates can cry foul, and people will listen—federal elections have been won or lost partly because voters agreed another side’s ads were unfair. We would like to see SAC adopt the same system used in other elections, where the final arbiter of truth and fair play is the electorate, not patronizing rules and politicized hearings.
