Alleged voter fraud in CFS referendum

Oversight committee claims student voted twice, cites voter list; accused student denies allegations

Chelsea Moore, Staff

CFS referendum oversight committee member Cathy Antsey told the Manitoban that Ryan Supeene, the senior stick of the faculty of engineering, successfully voted twice in the CFS referendum, and that they have the voters’ list to prove it. Supeene denies the allegations, adding that he merely expressed concern that voter fraud could have occurred.

“I have no idea why those allegations would come towards me. I brought it up with Amanda [Aziz] and said this is a potential problem, and that’s pretty much it,” said Supeene.

UMSU Science representative Michael Roy said that Supeene informed the oversight committee that he voted twice during the referendum to “test it,” and that Supeene made allegations that others had done so as well.

However, according to Supeene, he was only concerned about the way the referendum was conducted.

“If I have some concerns about the processes on this campus, I want to try and make a change,” said Supeene.

He claimed that having the counting of 30,000 ballots in one night ought to be a cause for skepticism — and a reason for looking into changing the elections process.

Cathy Anstey, UMSU executive director and a member of the referendum oversight committee, explained how Supeene was able to vote twice by presenting himself with two different student cards at the polling stations, although his second vote had not been counted.

“The oversight committee was in the process of discussing it when Ryan also informed one member . . . of the oversight committee that he voted twice,” said Anstey.

According to Paul Taylor, chair of the UMSU policy and bylaws committee, the fact that one person committed voter fraud is “not unusual” in an election where the voter turnout is so high.

“That one vote doesn’t make a huge difference,” said Taylor. However, he added that “it is really unfortunate, because we obviously want to limit any sort of vote tampering at all.”

Roy also argued that if a couple of people did vote twice in the CFS referendum, it wouldn’t have made a difference.

“It’s weird, but what can you really do? There’s never been an UMSU bylaw to deal with fraud on the part of the voter and I have no idea what one would do,” said Roy.

In this year’s proposed UMSU bylaw changes, the issue of voter fraud has not been specifically addressed. However, Taylor said efforts have been made to simplify UMSU bylaws, which could possibly prevent voter fraud in the future.

“The clearer the rules are, the less likely people will break them,” said Taylor.

However, Amanda Aziz, president of UMSU, said that the overall referendum procedures were successful and noted that there was a low incidence rate of voter fraud.

“If anything, the way the referendum was run in terms of polling was a lot better than what we’ve seen on campus,” said Aziz. “With such a high voter turn-out . . . there’s no way that [this incident] affected the outcome of the referendum.”