Your UMSU — led by incumbent candidate Jakob Sanderson — has swept the 2019 UMSU general elections.
Sanderson took 3,098 ballots, or 51.3 per cent of the vote, beating out Exist slate presidential candidate Annie Beach and New UMSU’s Jake Letwin, who took 1,666 and 1,278 votes, respectively.
There were 361 abstentions.
Sanderson’s executive will be made up of vice-president student life Jelynn Dela Cruz, vice-president community engagement Kyra Fanning, vice-president advocacy Sarah Bonner-Proulx and vice-president finance and operations Mbuli Matshe.
Sanderson, Bonner-Proulx and Matshe are returning for a second term.
The Your UMSU slate pulled in around 50 per cent of the votes cast for every executive position. New UMSU trailed in second for every position except vice-president of finance and operations.
Sanderson said he is “incredibly excited to start off another year with a full team.”
“It was extremely exciting,” he said.
“I think, honestly, as incredible as the feeling was the first year, I think this year was even more exciting, even more empowering. I think that it shows that the students have faith that we’re on the right track. To not only be privileged enough to win this election, but to win with a majority of voters […] I think is extremely exciting and I think it provides this union with a really strong direction.”
He added that the next order of business was to “get some sleep.”
Only two community representative positions were contested, international and accessibility students’ representative, which were won by Victoria Nwabuisi and Eliza Hydesmith, respectively.
Several community representative positions were won unopposed.
Sharlene MacCoy will return as the mature students’ representative, Alicia Kubrakovich is the new Indigenous students’ representative, Trevor Smith is the LGBTTQ* students’ representative and Sia Yamba is the women’s representative.
This year saw a higher than average voter turnout, with 6,403 total votes counted, representing nearly 29 per cent participation. Last year saw 5,616 ballots cast.
