Here he comes, Nicholas Laplante. The man that can be heard miles away. How does he feel, just two hours away from the closing of the voting stations? "I feel awesome." he adds "Basically students should go vote. Last minute voters are always the most dangerous ones.""I talked to some reliable sources, and I think it will be around 11.5 to 12.5%. It's pathetic. Students like to complain a lot, but don't like to vote. It's the one time when what they have to say matters a lot." Without directly saying, that was a pretty implicit endorsement of the Picard idea for General Assemblies.
So what would his solution be to get a higher voter turnout? "I think there should be an option "None of the above." If you don't like your choices, you shouldn't have to vote for them."
"YES" could be heard from our photographer.
Photo courtesy of Jason Chiu. The SFUO blog exclusive.
6 comments:
its called spoiling your ballot. i do it every provincial and federal election.
Just ask the secretary of the Graduate Economics Student Association, Ross Prusakowski, for his opinion about "none of the above".
He is a grad of the University of Alberta, where their undergrad council (like our BOA) elections contain such an option.
Democracy at its finest.
Correction Nick, I believe Mr Prusakowski is a grad student at the University of Ottawa.
I think the fact that he is the secretary of the Graduate Economics Student Association implied that he was a graduate student, Mr. Chiu.
By "a grad of", I meant that he is a graduate of that university, which is correct.
I think Nick's wording was correct.
Also, NOTA (none of the above) is a great option to have. At the UA it's on all the ballots and while it's never out-right won a race it has made things interesting.
For one, it's been a means of giving outgoing students to vote on issues (hello U-Pass!) that they care about, while not really voting for the main candidates.
For people disappointed with the choices it's a great form of expression. Last year in the VP(Operations and Finance) race between 2 candidates NOTA pulled in ~30%.
For the council elections, if there are say 9 seats (like arts at UA) and NOTA places 7th, then the 7,8,9th seats all remain vacant until the fall by-election or, for the rest of the year if that happens at the by-election
Gee Ross, I figure you of all people would know whether Nick was right or not, and not just think that his working was correct.
hehe.
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