Student election fraud has become more common in recent years across many Lower Mainland institutions
Matt Shipley (he/him) // Coordinating Editor
The most recent Capilano Students’ Union (CSU) by-election, for which voting occurred on Oct. 3-5, saw the disqualification of four candidates and a total of 19 decisions from the elections administrator. These decisions were made at the requests of students who felt that candidates were contravening the laws of the election process, through a publicly available form on the CSU website.
Disqualification due to unlawful election conduct is nothing new at CapU. In the 2022 CSU general election, three candidates were disqualified during an election emergency procedure in which the Elections Administrator delayed the submission of the final election results due to an unprecedented number of complaints and allegations against candidates.
“I think part of the answer is that misbehaviour has been allowed to go unchecked and so has become normalized,” said David Ennis, current CSU Elections Administrator. “Candidates, hoping to gain an advantage, campaign more aggressively than they should and for some students this is intimidating. But most students just ignore this behaviour rather than calling it out.”
An Instagram account by the name of @international.student.union was rumoured to be interfering with the 2022 CSU general election, as well as many other student union elections in the Lower Mainland around that time. Many posts on the account show support for certain candidates in student union elections, in many cases incriminating them in slates together.
Recently, the account has shifted to a more advocacy-based platform, running events and speaking to political figures in an effort to aid the lives of international students. They had no apparent involvement in the 2023 CSU by-election.
The owner of the account, Jashan Sidhu, was seen on KPU’s main campus during their student association’s election cycle in early March 2023 and was asked to leave by campus security. He was not seen again on the premises.
Jashan Sidhu denied a request for comment.
While the International Student Union has changed, the effects of the elections it was involved in still continue to affect elections today. At CapU, the volume of election-related complaints has gone from an average of 1.7 per election* to 15 per election after the 2022 general election. At the recent CSU AGM, a decision was made to hire two elections assistants to aid in the Elections Administrator’s duties during these elections due to the number of complaints and decisions that need to be made. Elections proceedings and countermeasures, however, have remained as they were.
“I think there is understanding of this problem on the CSU Board and CSU has, for example, included reminders about following the rules in its election announcements,” said Ennis. “I still think that more could be done to raise awareness among students and candidates about improper campaigning. If everyone understands what the rules are and works to see that they are followed, we can make elections fair and pleasant for everyone”
*statistics were only available from the 2020 general election onward.