The Hello UofT slate has claimed six of seven executive candidate positions in the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) spring elections, unofficial results show.

Jasmine Wong Denike, the outgoing UTSU vice president, external and Hello U of T’s presidential candidate won out over 1UofT’s Madina Siddiqui. Shawn Williams was elected vice president, university affairs; Farah Noori was elected vice president, equity; Shahin Imtiaz was elected vice president, campus life, and Ryan Gomes, outgoing vice president, internal & services, was elected vice president, professional faculties.

Carina Zhang was the only executive candidate from 1UofT to be elected, winning the vice president, internal & services seat by a narrow margin over Hello UofT’s Mathias Memmel, a current board director for the Faculty of Music and co-president of that division’s undergraduate association. In a similarly close race, Hello U of T’s Lucinda Qu beat out Andre Fast for the position of vice president, external.

The UTSU’s Elections Procedures Code states that executive candidate elections that result in a victory by a margin of up to 50 votes will automatically be recounted.

This was the first UTSU election to be run using the single transferable voting system: a type of voting system whereby electors rank candidates in order of preference. Voter turnout was 9.7 per cent, with 4,871 of 50,113 eligible voters participating, a decrease from 13 per cent in last year’s elections.

Oddly, there were only three offline votes recorded, two of which were test ballots from the UTSU. These ballots do not appear in the unofficial voting breakdown but are included in the turnout calculation.

Additionally, the referendum in favour of a 25¢ levy for Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Trans people of the University of Toronto (LGBTOUT) passed, after years of trying to acquire funding.

The results are posted on the UTSU’s page on the SimplyVoting website. They remain unofficial until they are ratified at a meeting of the UTSU’s Board of Directors next month.


This story is developing, more to follow.

Disclosure: Shahin Imtiaz is a former associate science editor for The Varsity.