On-campus polling station a dumb idea
UMSU should have read election residency rules
CARSON JEREMA STAFF
Having a polling station on campus for the civic election was a really dumb idea. The plan was broached by UMSU in August when they requested that the city provide a polling station on campus for the Oct. 25 civic election to serve students living in residence and others who happen to be walking by. At the Sept. 28 UMSU meeting president Garry Sran complained about the city’s denial of the request, and was quoted in the Manitoban last week making similar complaints.
Never mind that UMSU was too disorganized to ask for the polling station before the deadline, the proposal is simply pointless. Most students at the U of M are permanent Winnipeg residents meaning they have polling stations in their own neighbourhoods.
One of the complaints raised was that apparently students would have trouble getting to a polling station. It begs the question: if students can’t get around, how do they get to and from school everyday? And given that the U of M’s halls are usually empty before 5 p.m. as students head home, and polling stations are open until 8 p.m., the convenience argument makes little sense.
Students come from all over the city, so ballots would have been required for all 15 wards that when taking mayor, councillors and school trustees into account totals 57 different types of ballots. The on-campus polling station would also have had to coordinate with 182 other polling stations to ensure accurate records of voters were kept. Nothing short of a logistical nightmare.
Maybe the city should provide polling stations at every workplace in Winnipeg. And why not in people’s backyards? As for residents living on campus, did anyone look into whether they are actually eligible to vote? Because they aren’t. According to the Municipal Council and School Boads Elections Act, eligible voters must be residents of the municipality, in this case Winnipeg, for six months prior to the election. This year that would be since April 25.
The Act also states that: “A person is a resident of the place where he or she has his or her ordinary residence, and to which he or she intends to return when away from it.” The City of Winnipeg election website offers clarification on this point: “For example, a student attending university or college outside the city, but who intends to return home after the term ends, is considered a resident voter.” This statement is in reference to people leaving Winnipeg to study in, say, Toronto and return for the summer — not people who come to Winnipeg and return to their “permanent” residence, in say Dauphin, at the end of the school year. Students from rural Manitoba (where most students living on campus come from) can vote in their home municipality via snail mail.
To be fair it probably didn’t occur to UMSU that students living on campus couldn’t vote in the Winnipeg civic election. But they should have read the election rules, if not before they approached the city, then certainly before Sran complained about it at the UMSU meeting or spoke to the Manitoban about it.
Now if UMSU actually did want to provide voting opportunities for residents on campus, ballots for Manitoba’s more than 100 municipalities, countless wards and innumerable polling stations would be required. Who would co-ordinate, never mind pay for all that?
The only students that it makes a flicker of sense to have a polling station for would be those who actually live in the St. Norbert riding. But, it only takes 10 or 15 minutes to walk to a polling station. How lazy, disinterested and disengaged does one have to be to use a 10-minute walk as an excuse for not voting?
In other words, the proposal to have a polling station on campus was nothing short of asinine. And it’s not like students would have made use of it anyway.
