No Arts and Science Candidates In CSU By-Election

Potential Candidates Didn’t Gather Enough Valid Signatures To Run

NewsAlexandre Denis — Published November 12, 2019

In an email, Chief Electoral Officer Florian Prual confirmed this morning that there are no candidates for Arts and Science in this election. Three candidates submitted candidacy forms but none gathered the required amount of valid signatures.

Council candidates must collect at least 45 valid signatures from students part of the CSU on their nomination form. The form asks for name, student ID, and signature.These have to be submitted to the CEO by Nov. 1 at 9 p.m.

Signatures can be invalid if the name is illegible or doesn’t exactly match the name the student enrolled under. Signatures must also be from undergraduate students of the same faculty of the candidate.

Mathieu Kazan-Xanthopoulos, the only Arts and Science candidate present at the CSU election debate, and two other unnamed candidates were deemed not eligible to run by the CEO because of insufficient valid signatures.

“Smells fishy but it is what it is.”
—Mathieu Kazan-Xanthopoulos

Prual said he tried to verify some signatures as the candidates were missing as little as three to 10 valid signatures. He reached out to the Dean of Students to attempt to verify the signatures by their student ID, but did not get a reply.

The CEO does not have access to student IDs, so signatures are verified by manually searching through the undergraduate student list by name.

Kazan-Xanthopoulos said he had gathered 70 signatures, but was told he did not have enough valid signatures to run.

“Smells fishy but it is what it is,” he told The Link in a Facebook message.

This will guarantee at least two vacant seats on council, as only one Fine Arts candidate is running for two vacant seats for that faculty.

The only competitive races this election are for the John Molson School of Business and Independent Student seats. Eight candidates are competing for five JMSB seats and three candidates for two Independent Seats.

Only three candidates are running for the three vacant seats for the Gina Cody School of Engineering and Computer Science.

Voting will run from Nov. 12 to Nov. 14.

A previous version of this article stated there were seven JMSB seats open in this week’s by-election. In fact, there are only five seats open. The Link regrets this error.