15.74 per cent of eligible voters hit the polls, up from 11 per cent last year
Kevin Penny
writer
Student elections have come and gone and with it, another year of low voter turnout rates.
Grant MacEwan University saw 15.74 per cent of eligible voters cast a ballot. Despite this relatively low number, voting has gone up from prior elections, with a five per cent increase since online ballots were first introduced in 2009.
Many students simply didn’t feel connected to what the Students’ Association (SA) does for them.
“I wasn’t informed enough to make a decision,” said a MacEwan music students who chose not to vote.
Others who did choose to vote felt there wasn’t going to be any apparent change with new heads in office.
“I can’t really imagine anyone doing a significantly different job than what the current SA is doing, but I guess some people have better ideas than others,” said Reid Thiel, a first-year music student who decided to vote after listening to a debate held at the Centre for the Arts and Communications campus.
Other post-secondary institutions around the country are feeling the effects of low voter turnout rates as well.
The University of Alberta had a decrease in their turnout (15.9 per cent) due to a lack of candidates. Rory Tighe, the current president, won with a landslide victory against his jokester opponent, Dr. Horrible.
The University of Ottawa and the University of British Columbia faced even lower election turnout rates than MacEwan with just 11 per cent of eligible voters casting a ballot. On the other side, the University of Calgary had over 23 per cent of students turn up to vote, a five-year high for the institution.
There were 11,174 MacEwan students eligible to vote this year, with only 1,759 heading to the polls.
Intercamp 