KSA candidates raise concerns about election voting process

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Three candidates running for seats on the Kwantlen Student Association council are asking for a fair election after they saw voting took place a day early at Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s Surrey campus on Tuesday. 

Candidates Jaskirat Bains, Arman Bhinder, and Vishavjeet Brar say they saw advance voting they weren’t aware of, take place in Birch 250 on Tuesday where any student could vote, not just those who pre-registered. 

“No candidate had information [of] what was going on,” Bains says. “It’s not fair to us, so we want to make a statement.” 

Bains and Brar are two of the 21 students who signed a petition expressing the KSA elections need more transparency and have election voting issues. The petition discusses current council members allegedly asking students to vote for specific candidates on Tuesday, despite not being registered for pre-voting. 

Advanced voting was supposed to take place on Feb. 12 between 11:00 am and 5:00 pm in the KSA office in the Cedar building for those who couldn’t make it to campuses on the general voting days, Feb. 14 and 15 from 10:30 am to 6:30 pm. 

In an email sent to KPU students last week, students wishing to vote in advance needed to submit their request to the KSA’s chief returning officer (CRO) no later than 12:00 pm on Feb. 11 and include an explanation of why voting on one of the general election days would be difficult. 

KSA CRO Sameer Ismail says advanced voting couldn’t happen on Monday due to unexpected technical issues with KPU and Simply Voting, the system that the KSA uses for elections.

“Those two systems were not talking to each other, which meant that nobody was able to log in, nobody was actually able to view a valid ballot,” Ismail says, adding that it didn’t get solved until Tuesday morning. 

“On Monday night, I sent a broadcast email to candidates. In that broadcast email, I let them know what had happened, [and] what we were doing to resolve it.” 

Ismail says due to not being able to solve the technical issue until Tuesday, anybody who had pre-registered to vote for Monday would be allowed to vote the next day. He says that he also made voting open to students who could not vote on the general election days. 

“If somebody came in and said ‘Sorry, can’t come in over the next two days,’ they were permitted to vote,” Ismail says. 

Fifty-four students voted on Tuesday, which is less than one per cent of the student population, Ismail says. 

“It’s a vanishingly small number and I want to stress that all of those were eligible voters.” 

Arman Bhinder, who is running for students of colour representative, says there was no mention of Tuesday’s voting location in an email, which made him feel suspicious after seeing students in the Birch building waiting to vote. 

“We [candidates] saw many students in the Birch building, there was no mention of [the] Birch building in an email about the rooms or polling,” Bhinder says. 

The Cedar building was unavailable due to a pre-existing booking, which led them to have it in the Birch building, Ismail says. 

KSA staff were directed to inform anybody who came looking to vote, where the location was, he says. Ismail contacted people who had pre-registered where the new voting location was, and left it open for students to come by to vote early if they couldn’t on the general voting days to encourage voter turnout. 

Ismail says the decision that he made was based on three factors — voters who might not have been able to vote due to the changed date, those who would have registered in advance if it was originally scheduled for Tuesday, and not having an efficient way to inform all voters of the changes in a timely manner. 

“Tuesday is not one of the days KPU sends out a broadcast email to reach all of the voters,” Ismail says. “I might have been able to talk KPU into sending an irregular one on a Tuesday, but those don’t go out until three or four in the afternoon, the day would have been nearly gone, so that really wasn’t a helpful option to exercise.” 

The Runner asked if the KSA was able to share the early voting information on other social media platforms, but did not receive a response before publication time. 

Vishavjeet Brar, who is running for Surrey Campus Representative, says the unknown voting time has created challenges for campaigning, as he didn’t know students had already voted. 

“There were a lot of students [who] told us [that they] have casted [their] vote [on Tuesday],” Brar says. “This is definitely an injustice for candidates like me who are asking people to vote for us.” 

“Students should know that rights are being harmed over here.” 

A protest took place outside of the KSA office later on Tuesday at 5:50 pm demanding for the student association to disqualify the votes collected to create a more fair election period. 

Bains, Bhinder, and Brar were three of the students who attended the protest. 

“Whether it’s 50 or 100 votes, we are starting from zero. That’s no use of elections,” Bhinder says. 

Bains, Bhinder, and Brar all say they want more transparency in letting students know when open voting is taking place, and for their issues to be heard about elections and the KSA. 

The Runner will provide updates as soon as more information becomes available.