Dennis Bayazitov | Assistant News Editor

Featured image: With their online petition, Evolve YU aims to achieve fairer democratic processes for all future YFS elections. | Basma Elbahnasawy

Evolve YU has created an online petition requesting signatures to demonstrate student support for online voting in future York Federation of Students (YFS) elections in an attempt to instill more accessible and transparent democratic processes.

Despite schooling in the ballpark of 53,000 students, enrolled in over 160 programs, the York Keele campus experiences an annual voter turnout of 14 per cent for each YFS election.

Noam Yekutiel Sibony and Priyank D’Sa, respective president and director of Students in Support of Free Speech York U, and Nicole Tilin, president of Hillel International at York, are three of the initiative’s more active members, heavily involved in coordinating much of its outreach and promotion.

“Evolve YU includes an open coalition of the York NDP, Young Liberals, and Campus Conservatives York University (CCYU),” says Sibony, a second-year Biophysics student.

“It was initiated, and is currently run, by a broad collective of passionate student volunteers from all walks of academic life—all trying to achieve the same goals: transparency, accessibility, and representation.”

The student-run grassroots movement aims to support online voting at York as a means of evolving from its more primitive, less representative, and less accessible current voting method, Sibony says.

“A few of us got together and figured things don’t just happen by themselves,” says D’Sa, a fourth-year political science student.

“We have to get out there and pursue it, so we decided to run a petition. This is something most students agree with. We went around collecting signatures.”

Online voting is a framework that has already been adopted by many universities around the GTA and the province—including U of T, Ryerson, Laurier, and Waterloo, adds D’Sa. Likewise, all of York’s college councils implement the same process.

“It’s high time for York to catch up and make voting more accessible,” D’Sa says.

Tilin, a fifth-year Kinesiology student, says 14 per cent is too small a fraction to meaningfully represent the entire York student body.

“Online voting increases accessibility to everyone, especially those who do not live on campus,” she says. “It makes voting possible from the comfort of their homes, while stuck in traffic, in transit, during a break from studying in the library, or even in line for a coffee at Starbucks.”

Tilin reports when online voting was first implemented at Laurier, elections accounted for a 158 per cent increase in turnout, noting Laurier is not considered a commuter school.

“Imagine the effects online voting will have at York.”

Apart from promoting more accessibility for student voting, the three Evolve YU affiliates concur the process is more sustainable, accurate, and secure.

“Online voting uses a lot less manpower, and is therefore cost-efficient and better for the environment,” says D’Sa.

“There is no room for human error, such as miscounting ballots and students receiving an incorrect number of ballots,” says Tilin.

“Using York’s online servers, where our grades, financial records, and personal information are stored, we can rest assured online voting will be fair, democratic, and secure.”

For CCYU, “it comes down to getting students to buy in to our student government,” says fourth-year Schulich BBA and CCYU President Ryan Ruderman.

“At the end of the day, students are really representing everyone, and in the past, York’s shown student turnout has been pretty horendous—something like 14 per cent.

“To put this in perspective, in the public provincial and federal elections, people lament about 60 per cent being too low.”

One candidate currently campaigning for the YFS election, who wished to remain anonymous, does not believe the process would benefit from online voting.

“I’m not trying to say anyone would rig it, but we know electronics sometimes aren’t the most reliable,” they say. “I feel like with a paper and pen and getting somebody’s student card, that’s the easiest way you can go.”

Signatures are still being gathered by Evolve YU volunteers. D’sa estimates the current count to be nearing 1,000; however, the aim is for 7,000, at which point the online petition will be filed directly to the YFS. The hope is to submit this before the semester ends, for the new YFS executive board to review and implement for the YFS 2019 election.

The YFS could not be reached for comment.