General election results void, new election to be conducted by paper ballot
February 9, 2026 3:41 AM
The results of the 2010 StFX Students’ Union General Election were declared null and void on Thursday, February 4, after a two-day voting period had been conducted to elect a president and vice president of the students’ union, two students to serve on the board of governors, two senators, and senior class president and vice president.
Voting was conducted through an online ballot on February 2 and 3, but concerns arose after errors were noted in the unofficial election results that were transmitted via email to the student body on the night of February 3.
In an event held in the SUB café after polls closed on Wednesday, February 3, it was announced that Sam Mason and Alia Hack had won in the presidential and vice presidential category, while Sandy MacIntosh and Thomas Lattimer secured positions on the board of governors.
Initially, Patrick Phillips and Mariah Giberson were declared to have won senate seats on a yes/no ballot, and Brianna Hunter and Katie Archibald were announced as the victors in the race for senior class president and vice president.
At 6:25 p.m. the same night, the Students’ Union Vice President of Communications Sarah Furey emailed the unofficial election results to the student body.
Students [including, in the interest of full disclosure, the editor-in-chief of the Xaverian Weekly] began to express their concerns to the students’ union and in the xtalk online forum about the potential inaccuracies of the results on the grounds that only a single spoiled ballot was counted for the entire election.
Concerns also arose that the total number of votes cast in the presidential and vice presidential category (2770) was not in accordance with the 46.5 per cent voter turnout announced.
“I noticed right away that something was wrong, and –not giving any names – but I know more than one person who spoiled their ballot, and there was only one spoiled [on the unofficial results],” says Matt Whalen, a student at StFX. “And I didn’t notice until someone else told me, but the vote totals were off.”
In an email sent out by Chair of Council Dave Faour at 9:04 p.m. on February 4, the election results were declared null and void.
Faour’s email indicated “technical failures, communication issues, and a problematic transition between the current and previous Returning Officers” were responsible for the void election.
Faour’s email also announced a council information session for 7 a.m. on Friday, February 5 to inform councillors, students, and the media of the issues surrounding the election’s failure and to determine the appropriate course of action to be taken in holding a new election.
“The election is officially void,” Chief Returning Officer Genevieve Taylor said at the 7 a.m. meeting. “What happened was, there was some suspicion that started with the spoiled ballots.”
“And the big issue wasn’t the spoiled ballots not being recorded; it was that if people refreshed their page, more than one vote could be cast,” she continued. “There were over 2700 votes cast but only 2300 users logged in.”
When the election began in the morning of February 2, votes were cast using a new online elections system developed by a software company called Sercada. This system crashed at 9:36 a.m.
“So the election system crashed at 9:36 in the morning and we all got the email about that, so we hastily tried to set up the system on the old election system which is the one we’ve used in the past,” confirmed Taylor. “That was up by 10 o’clock.”
“In our training as ROs – and I am in no way passing the blame here – we were taught to set up this election system wrong,” she said. “And as such, this is why the election system failed, because we didn’t completely set it up right.”
Responding to questions as to why the numerical discrepancies were not noticed by elections officials prior to announcing the winners, Taylor said:
“I read those results and I saw it, and I was like ‘oh my goodness this is so exciting, people are happy with the union - there’s no spoiled ballots.’ And right now that seems like a ludicrous idea, but at the time it seemed like an exciting thing.”
“I was talking with [developer of the online election system] Mike Smit as those results were being announced to find out why there was only one spoiled ballot,” said Returning Officer Alex Dorward, who was not on campus February 3 due to illness. “The reason for that was that the tables weren’t created properly to hold spoiled ballots.”
For her part, Furey said:
“I thought it was important, for the transparency of the students’ union to send out an email with those numbers and why they were read. This was the print-off from the system, and for transparency, we relayed those numbers to the students. If you look back in the email, it clearly states that these were the unofficial results.”
The February 5 meeting also launched a discussion for planning a new election.
Students’ Union Web Developer Ben Burns expressed concerns about the security of the existing online election system – the one that has been utilized in the past few years – to the effect that the simplicity of the information required to login renders the system vulnerable to hacking.
Several councillors, candidates, and gallery members present indicated they favoured a transition to a paper ballot system on these grounds.
Student Matt Whalen says he is still concerned about the fairness of the second election.
“In my mind, this election is no more valid than the last one as far as who comes out the winner,” he argues. “The next election doesn’t mean a thing in my mind, because it’s not very democratic – there was a pre-election held and votes were tainted.”
The chief returning officer made a preliminary announcement on Saturday, February 6 that an election by paper ballot would be conducted on Tuesday, February 9 and Wednesday, February 10. Polling stations are located in Nicholson Hall, the Oland Centre, the 3rd floor of the Students' Union Building and Morrison Hall. Student ID is required.