Spring elections for the UTM Students’ Union brought record voter turnout and complaints. The entire Students United slate, as well as both presidential candidates, received enough demerits to be disqualified. After appeals, Vickita Bhatt and other Students United candidates no longer face disqualification. Unofficial results have Bhatt’s slate sweeping all executive positions, with 1,638 votes for Bhatt and 1,142 for her opponent, Henry Ssali, running on UTM Renew. Results must be ratified by the board of directors before they become official.
Executive candidates with over 35 points are disqualified. They can appeal to the Elections and Referenda Committee to overturn rulings by the chief returning officer, Kenny Lee. Upon appeals, Bhatt’s demerit points were reduced from 62 to 30 and Ssali’s from 36 to 26. UTM Renew plans to pursue several appeals next week.
“Most of the points reduced were because of lack of witnesses and evidence,” said Lee. “We brought in the individuals that were supposed to have committed the violations and they denied everything. We felt that we didn’t have any hard evidence against them, so we had to let it go.”
Peter Buczkowski, campaign manager for Henry Ssali, said that the Elections and Referenda Committee, which completed hearing the first round of appeals on Monday, was biased. He said that one of the three committee members, Hibba Amin, had changed her profile picture on Facebook to a Students United icon and urged others to vote for Students United in her status update. Buczkowski criticized the other two members of the committee, Carole Au Yeung and Joey Santiago, for not removing Amin.
Bhatt could not be reached for comment.
UTMSU’s board of directors will strike a new committee at their March 25 meeting to hear arguments to “appeal the appeals.” Buczkowski said UTM Renew will pay the $30 fee to appear before that committee next week, as soon as it is established, but that he was unsure whether Renew would receive a fair hearing. “There’s a lot of talk around campus of a lot of the impartialities not existing where they have to, a lot of bias and sense of entitlement,” he said.
Asked if he felt the Renew slate had a chance at next week’s appeals, Lee said he was doubtful since the appeals committee serves mainly to remove points and not to add them. Lee also confirmed that a recount yesterday for one board of directors seat was completed and that the initial results were correct.
“To be honest I think some of [the candidates] were abusing the complaint system to try to get the other team disqualified,” said Lee, who said he was partially responsible for the high number of demerit points this year. “The moment I see a violation, I don’t give a warning. I punish immediately,” he said. “This year there were a lot of complaints, so it was the hope that by giving them points they would stop, but they didn’t.”
Lee said he was disappointed that candidates didn’t uphold the spirit of the elections. “I wouldn’t say either team was worse, but personally I think both teams were engaging in negative campaigning in one way or another.”
A previous version of this article reported that candidates met with the Elections and Referenda Appeals Committee. In fact, they met with the Elections and Referenda Committee.
