Category Archives: AMS Elections

The 2011 Sparkle Surveys: Part 1

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For all other blogs, today’s endorsement day. For us, it’s make up your own damn mind day, otherwise known as our rad video endorsements ran out of batteries. we’re workin’ on it. In the meantime, sweet readers, set the lights to low and imagine we’re whispering in your ear.

‘Cause baby, let’s not deny this thing between us: You’re Kurt Hummel, and I’m that Blaine hottie from the super-tolerant boys’ school, and it’s cold outside. Join me for a heartwarming duet, and let’s snuggle up to these fiery candidates as we bring back, smoother than late-night jazz, the first of our Classic Confidential Surveys.

Filipino/Irish. CATHOLIC DREAMBOAAAAAAAT

Highlights from this edition: MOTHERFUCKING SEAN HEISLER brings it (again), Justin Yang tells us how he really feel about Issues That Matter, Arash Ehteshami really wants your love, and two (2) candidates open up about their Gossip Girl-themed nicknames. Plus, a kitty! Who says we never bring the real news?

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Srs Bsns: Bijan and AMS Councillors Can’t Be VFM

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Dearest readers who are normal students and not hacks: bear with us. This is going to get a little code intensive, but we’re SUPER FREAKING STOKED because this is our first lead that we’ve thought of, researched, and wrote all on our own!

Despite AMS Councillors being active in VFM the last few years (see Geoff’s Place, Radical Beer) and Brian Platt currently writing for UBC Vanguard while Crystal Hon is writing for UBC Insiders, AMS Code actually stipulates that they are not allowed to be compensated by the AMS, who supplies the money for Voter Funded Media.

Before owls start hooting and hollering, we’re not writing this to stir up shit about Brian Platt. Instead, Bijan has registered Bijan.ca as a Voter Funded Media for the Elections VFM.

  1. WTF, this is just stupid
  2. Bijan’s job is to COMMUNICATE WITH STUDENTS and be the PUBLIC FACE OF THE AMS.
  3. Seriously, you’re trying to make more money from student fees?
  4. He also hasn’t written ANYTHING ABOUT THE ELECTIONS.

so what, we already used this, our brains hurt.

However, AMS Code of Procedures says Bijan can’t get money from VFM.

Directors shall not receive monetary compensation from the Society unless such monetary compensation is received as a direct result of their positions:

i) as a Director;
ii) as an employee or paid volunteer of one of the Society’s business operations, Services, Resource Groups, programs or clubs, provided however that the Director was an employee or paid volunteer continuously in the Business, Service, Resource Group, Program or Club position prior to being nominated for the position of Director; or
iii) within one of the Society’s Constituencies.

Translation: People on AMS Council  can’t get paid for anything else that isn’t their job. They’re not allowed to pick up random catering shifts, or be a security guard (real life examples with councillors) because they are a Director of the Society. So why would getting paid for a VFM blog be any different?

Read on only if you want to get super hacky or are on AMS Council.

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Liveblogging is Overated, Anyways @ CiTR Debates One

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If you weren’t listening to CiTR 101.9 today or don’t read the Minimalist Owl Blog because it may/may not hurt your “Arts student” eyes , then you might have missed the first of many (and sometimes simultaneous) debates of this election. Well, do we have a treat for you!

Yeah, that's what I said, too

Yeah, that's what I said, too

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Aaaaand They’re Off!

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AMS Elections are set to begin Monday at 12:01am, but this little editor needs to get to bed and is posting a couple hours early. We’ve posted the candidates list, and surprise! Someone has already withdrawn.To see all the craziness happening next week, check out our events page. And hey, might as well vote for us to win some money in the future, too.

Meanwhile, enjoy the following snapshots from the All Candidates Meeting that took place on Friday. The biggest surprise to us? Ben “The Situation” Cappellacci throwing his hat into the ring for Board of Governors at last minute. If you’re interested, other blogs have more indepth or plagiarized rambly coverage, we’re too busy compiling results from our Sparkly Surveys 2011. Yes, that’s right, we’re bringing them back.

this time around, he's single and looking.

the ea is very protective of his branding.

the board of governors discussing the ever important issue of sustainability

future fan fiction?

People Who May or May Not Run

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AMS Elections are currently a shitshow, and they haven’t even started yet.

  1. Nominations close on Friday and there is no AMS Elections website. Maybe if they advertised we wouldn’t have three slates of people who are always involved?
  2. There is no schedule of events anywhere…debates? Beer garden? Anything?
  3. There are also no elections dates or campaigning dates posted anywhere except on the Facebook page, which ~50 people like and hasn’t been updated since November (same with Twitter).
  4. There is no VFM funding right now and elections are about to start!
  5. Oh, and NO ONE KNOWS WHAT VOTING SYSTEM WE ARE USING.

The Elections budget is approximately $50,000. Isn’t there a little referendum coming up that has to do with fiscal responsibility? We get that the EA is probably working on the new online voting system, but he has also hired four co-ordinators to help him, and it’s THREE DAYS before elections start.

Anyway, we are coping by giving you GOSSIP. Hot Gossip.

At the end of the day, candidates are supposed to be running individually and not as part of a slate (fancy way of saying political party). Except this year, there are Three Groups Who Are Not A Slate.

  1. The Frat Boys and Token Sorority Girl (Bijan’s picks to continue his legacy of UBC’s Got Talent)
  2. The Incumbents (the political hacks who think they can change the world with the AMS)
  3. The SJC/Knollies (the people who only care about the AMS when something pisses them off)

With that in mind, we give you the gossip!

The Frat Boys and Token Sorority Girl

President: Michael Moll is Alpha Delta Phi and part of the CUS, from Kenya, and shows up to AMS Council occasionally.

VP Academic: Matt Parson is Phi Delta Theta, the President of the Inter Fraternity Council at UBC (which EA Erik Mackinnon sits on), and is probably the hottest of all the candidates running. [Though some of our editors are on record as disagreeing.]

VP External: Katherine Tyson (isn’t technically in a sorority, she was too sick to rush this year) has been on AMS Council for a year and a half and is the Chair of UnECoRn, the committee that deals with things in the VPX’s portfolio. Was known this year for being rather antagonistic to Bijan—right until elections season rolled around. What gives, KT? We were way into your powerful woman schtick.

VP Finance: Arash Ehteshami is Kappa Sigma, the VP Internal of the AUS, and dating the President of SUS.

VP Administration: Mike Silley is Sigma Chi, has been on AMS Council for a long time, and is the Chair of BAFCOM, the committee that deals with AMS Businesses.

The Incumbents/Hacks

President: Jeremy McElroy is the current VP External, former AUS/RBF guy who hearts the AMS.

VP Academic: Justin Yang is the current VP Finance of AUS, former VP Finance of SUS, former Student Senator, and is the current AMS Tutoring co-ordinator.

VP External: Mitch Wright  is the current Associate VP External, former elections administrator, former AUS dude and all around hack.

VP Finance: Elin Tayyar is Beta Theta Pi, the current VP Finance, former SAC Vice-Chair, and last year’s hottest candidate.

VP Admin: A BLACK SHEEP. Er, dark horse?

The SJC/Knollies

They keep their Facebook profiles quite limited, unfortunately. Why do these people have no overly involved student profiles?! We’ll give you more details as we learn them.

President: Gord Katic is a kid we met off of Twitter who is a part of the SJC. He’s incredibly verbose. That’s all we know.

VP Academic: Omar Shaban is part of SPHR whose passion in life is “a secular Palestinian state where anybody regardless of his/her religion or race can live.” Awwwww!

VP External: Rory Breasail has been on AMS Council for nine months, and sits on the UnECoRn committee. He is also part of the SJC.

VP Finance: Arielle Friedman (also known as Care-ielle?!?) is part of the SJC, and a frequent contributor to The Knoll.

Other

There’s some random guy from RezLife at Totem who is also probably running for VP Finance, and a rumoured FIFTH candidate that we don’t know about.

Things to bitch about: We’ve only heard of ONE candidate for VP Admin, so if there’s any of you who like SUB/Clubs, you should run…the more the merrier! There’s also an extreme lack of women running, with only TWO femmes fatale garnering for your votes. Oh, and no joke candidates? Where is Princess Leia, Kommander Keg, the Invisible Man, or Water Fountain?

BoG: Sean Heisler (current BoAwesome), Andrew Carne (hacktastic engineer), Sean Cregten (current Associate VP Academic)

Senate: Thomas Brennan, Sean Cregten, AJ Hajir Hajian, <insert ten other random students here, five of whom will drop out within the first week>.

Nominations close on Friday!

Hack vs. Hack

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Oh goodness, y’all.

In a grandiose lesson about knocking on wood, not counting chickens before eggs are hatched, ETCETERA, in tonight’s council meeting our illustrious EA Isabel informed the group that the heretofore scandal-free AMS elections were, in fact, scandalicious.

Ladies and gentlemen: it appears we got hacked.

like, it was way rad

For big fat details in all their glory, you can read the full text of the Elections Fraud Report.  A quick summary follows, however, for you kids on the go.

  1. Mark Latham, Voter Funded Media guru, was analyzing data for his own purposes & discovered an apparent irregularity; he notified Isabel, who alerted the proper authorities.
  2. There are 731 “Suspect Votes” which were identified as being from the same IP address & voting in a four-hour bloc (a very large number of votes in a very short amount of time).
  3. An independent party, Forensic Data Recovery (FDR), has been hired to investigate this occurrence and see if their are other instances of voter fraud in the elections.
  4. These 731 votes affect ONLY the following races:
  • the single passing referendum (tuition policy = LOWER PLZ)
  • UBC Senate
  • VFM
  • OH FUCK WHAT

It’s still uncertain how the suspicious activity happened, whether or not saved votes were overwritten or the fraudulent votes were independent, etc. etc.  Is it possible that previous races were affected? oh yes.  Is it possible that there is undetectable fraud happening in our elections? Well, in the words of Speaker Dave:

We said they were a hacker. We didn’t say they were a super-smart hacker.

Sleep soundly, voters.  Oh, and the UBC Votes team (AUS, EUS, HKUS, & SUS) will not be using this online voting system, they will use WebVote. And you, O Computer Elite of the Cloning Powers, we have but one request for you:

OH GOD PLEASE it's been such a slow month

Irregular indeed.

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Last week, Nearly-Former Elections Administrator Isabel Ferreras sent out a Media Advisory letting us all know the following:

The Alma Mater Society of UBC Vancouver (AMS), UBC’s student union, has discovered voting irregularities in its January 2010 elections and referenda. The AMS is taking this issue very seriously and is taking the necessary measures to deal with this matter. An independent auditor has been hired to conduct a thorough investigation. The AMS will be unable to release any further information until the investigation is complete. The AMS’ primary concern is in serving students. As such, the organization will operate business as usual.


Council tonight will address this issue, and presumably key parties will learn what, exactly, the fuck is up.  Meantime, however, you and I and everyone else not privy to this info (which is, it seems a good 90% of hacks) are left wondering what exactly a voting irregularity is.  Because, to me, it sounds like this:

that looks painful.

(See, because the elections were supposed to have been passed, but apparently something wrong went into the system? and now things are all backed up? and we have to seek independent help for this blockag—oh, fuck it.)

YEAHHHH POOP JOKES YEEAAAAAHHHHHH

Way to go, UBC <3

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The polls are now closed! While the fun part isn’t here yet (Gallery, 6pm, Results!) we are sure breathing a sigh of relief.

AMS Confidential is so proud of all you hacks practicing safe sex campaigning so hard and barely violating any rules! Way to play nice. While there certainly wasn’t enormous scandal, we enjoyed making you all glittery.

These editors are also proud of our kickass Elections Guru who played it calm, tweeted up a storm, and threw a solid bzzr garden (on a Sunday night, no less). HOWEVER, last we heard the voter turnout was at 6923, which is 15% !!! (Update: we just did the math! Thanks Do Me Now Duncan) We surpassed last years turnout going against a predicted voter apathy. UN-what?

Way to go, Elections Guru. For this, we deem you a sexy as hell dreamboat <3 Also, loads of love to The Boyfriend (aka Chief Returning Officer), Mark, and Will from VFM!!

So hawt.

Gerald Deo Photo

3 hours!!!

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There’s only THREE hours left of voting. Get your vote on, be sexy, and cast that freaking ballot! It’s super easy and everything you need to know is right HERE. So far, 5634 have voted, let’s get another 1000 before 4pm!

Tonight, Gallery at 6pm for the final elimination round results! See you there for copious amounts of beer and hackery.

MIGHTY MORPHIN AMS EXECUTIVE

Also, I know you all think we’re supa kawaii, so don’t forget to vote for us on your ballot and………here in Continuous VFM! We’re at 26% right now, amazing and love love love.

You listen to Paris.