The race for the fifth AMS executive position, VP Administration, was cancelled in mid-campaign due to “campaigning irregularities.” While this cancellation was probably contrary to AMS code, and details were never confirmed by Elections Administrator Brendan Piovesan, a new race is soon to launch. And according to the rumor-mill, and the volume of nomination papers being passed around, it looks like this is going to be the most competitive race of the election. As you can see below, numerous serious, high profile contenders have stepped up:

Stephen McCarthy – Steve is the president of the UBC debate society, and the illustrious person behind “Serious Steve” on our colleagues’ blog over at the Devil’s Advocate.

Blake Frederick – Blake was VP Academic (and fellow blogger) Brendon Goodmurphy’s assistant this year, so he has experience working on issues in the executive structure of the AMS. He just got elected to Senate.

Tristan Markle – Tristan is a Science councilor and is also heavily involved in the AMS resource groups. He’s also an editor of the left-wing campus rag, The Knoll.

Mike Kushnir – Mike, who ran as a joke in the first iteration of this race as “Scary ” Mike “the rabbi”, is apparetnly running again as a serious candidate.

Shawn Stewart – Another VFM contestant. The mind behind the persona of “le grand gateau” over at Let Them Eat Cake. Shawn is also a SAC commisioner, so he’s got experience with some aspects of the Admin portfolio.

Patrick Meehan – Arts councilor, and politico.

Yian Messoloras – The apparent reason why the first VP Administration case was cancelled, and has to be run again, Yian wants to build a new SUB without increasing student fees by a penny.

All of the AUS – apparently a raft of AUSers want to run more jokes in this race than the rest of the elections put together. I sincerely hope they don’t. This elections doesn’t have much remaining credibility to lose, but any more jokes and screw-up could just scour whatever’s left away.

As soon as these are official, we’ll have some candidate questionnaires and analysis so that y’alls can make an informed decision.


Comments

24 Comments so far

  1. Anonymous on February 2, 2008 12:29 am

    If there are a lot of joke candidates, that will be totally “ClusterF–k”.

    On a serious note,almost all candidates just mentioned are guys, which again illustrates the gender imbalance in AMS…

  2. maayan kreitzman on February 2, 2008 12:36 am

    “almost”? which of these men isn’t telling us something?

  3. Reka on February 2, 2008 12:37 am

    No Sarah Naiman? Wha?

  4. Anonymous on February 2, 2008 1:43 am

    So correct me if I am wrong, but Sarah Naiman was thought to be excellent by just about everyone. As a result of a mostly useless election administrator, the race she was running in was cancelled. Now she no longer wants to run.

    So as a result of a really bad EA, the whole student society is being deprived of some serious talent? That’s just so sad.

  5. Anonymous on February 2, 2008 3:05 am

    I heard that Sarah didn’t want to win in the first place and convinced Brendan to cancel the race so she wouldn’t have to win, withdraw, and cause a by-election unilaterally. How convenient.

  6. Anonymous on February 2, 2008 5:13 am

    “I know you all hate me, and I hate this job, so lets get this over with as soon as possible”

    Brendan (EA) at the VP Admin ACM

  7. Andrew on February 2, 2008 5:20 am

    Pat Meehan was definitely not in attendance, or announced as a candidate. I dont know why he chose not to run

  8. Andrew on February 2, 2008 5:23 am

    As an addition, two new candidates are running:

    1) AUS President Stephanie Ryan

    2) Devil’s Advocate Editor-in-chief: Aaron Palm

  9. Patrick on February 2, 2008 6:25 am

    I chose not to run because its not the portfolio I am most familiar with.

    I wrestled around with this a great deal.

    I felt I could bring a lot, my two main priorities would have been getting AMS Link up and running (and fully functional), and making sure SUB renew was fully functional and excellent.

    In the end, I felt that I might be stepping on Stefanie Ratjen’s shoes. Everyone knows my fullest interest is the external portfolio, and working on an exec with an external who is not me would be awkward and could lead to problems.

    Also, Id like to graduate, and Im hoping others can do the job just as well as I. I dont want to step on anyones toes, and I want to help the society as best I can.

  10. Blake on February 2, 2008 8:17 am

    Hey fellow contenders – sorry that I was unable to make it to the meeting. I hope that my proxy showed up in my place. I’d like to know who I’m running against, so if anyone has that information, please let me know. Additional information will also be helpful, including candidates’ childhood fears, physical weaknesses, and so forth. Payment for info leading to a winning election may or may not be negotiable.

  11. Stephen McCarthy on February 2, 2008 8:42 am

    I’d also like to apologize for not being able to make the meeting (I’m typing this from Saskatoon!) A bit concerned that my proxy wasn’t informed of where the meeting was supposed to be held…

    In any case, Blake, my childhood fear is of the dark and my physical weakness is my high center of gravity due to my height. Use it to your own advantage if you wish.

  12. Fire Hydrant on February 2, 2008 8:58 am

    Let’s see if I can remember these…

    Steph Ryan (joke)
    Jeremy McElroy (joke?)
    Aaron “Devil’s Advocate” Palm (joke)
    Mike Kushnir
    Steve McCarthy
    Andrew Forshner
    Blake Frederick
    Shawn Stewart
    Tristan Markle
    Yian Messoloras

    Am I missing anyone? I’m worried about vote-splitting at the silly end of the spectrum.

    Voting is pencilled in for Feb 11-14, with no paper component. For every absent candidate, I believe at least one person in the room claimed to be their proxy.

    And I thought the line he started the meeting with started “I know you all hate my guts…”

  13. Anonymous on February 2, 2008 9:18 am

    I am confused. When was this nomination open? When was it closed? When was this meeting? Was any of this announced publicly? I certainly didn’t hear anything.

  14. Alfie on February 2, 2008 11:19 am

    From what I see there, it’s a very interesting competition. I have a hard time choosing one person.

  15. Fire Hydrant on February 2, 2008 10:54 pm

    I agree with Alfie. With this number of decent candidates, we clearly need a voting system where we can rank all candidates against each other using optionally-consecutive numerical marks (with ties permitted), such that we can most fully determine who’s preferred over whom (or some combination of more preferred and less despised, where a candidate who’s despised ranks above a candidate nobody’s ever heard of).

  16. Mike Thicke on February 3, 2008 2:16 am

    Never let a physicist explain politics.

  17. Blake on February 3, 2008 4:20 am

    Hmm, there indeed seems to be a plethora of candidates that appear reasonably qualified. Purely as a service to voters such as Alfie and Hydrant, I will do my best over the following week to expose all candidates other than myself as reasonably unqualified.

  18. Gerald on February 3, 2008 7:45 am

    alternately, Blake, you could just expose yourself and win a lot of votes that way.

  19. Alfie on February 3, 2008 8:33 am

    Umm… Negative campaigning, if I am just watching the political drama here, I would more than appreciate to watch the candidates “b–ching” each other. That’s entertaining.

    But as an informed voter, I hate negative campaigning and whoever does it will lose my vote.

    By the way, Mike’s right.
    and Bruce and Maayan are probably more right about the Condorcet system.

  20. Anonymous on February 3, 2008 10:28 pm

    ahaha…

    Someone should set up bets for the turnout at this electoral race. Seeing as how the previous elections only compelled around 6.4% of UBC students to vote, I would bet that the turnout for the VP Admin race will be somewhere between 0.1 and 1%. It will be most amusing to watch.

    It’s too bad really – this race should be important to students, if for no other reason, then because of the SUB Renew project, which the VP Admin oversees. It’s sucky that a very small number of people are going to vote to elect someone to a position through which he/she is going to be able to influence the future of the SUB, which a very large number of people use.

    – Sonja

  21. Andrew on February 3, 2008 11:50 pm

    Fire Hydrant, I am not running.

  22. Alfie on February 4, 2008 7:37 am

    Just for your info, Sonja,

    The enrolment data from the Registrar shows that there are approximately 44000+ students at the Vancouver campus. so 1% will be only 440 students voting, which I think is very unlikely for a race with so many qualified candidates. If they put in a little effor in Facebooking and classroom annoncement, which Yian did a lot. They should at least get around 200+ students for each candidate. I think a better estimate will be around 4-5%. However, the timeline for the whole campaign and by-election is not mentioned here or the election website. When should I vote and when will i get a ton of Facebook invitations from a bunch of semi-familiar individuals on the candidate list?

  23. Blake on February 4, 2008 8:29 am

    Alfie,

    For your info, the campaign period began 27 minutes ago and will run until Thursday, February 14th. Voting will be strictly online from Monday, February 11th to Thursday, February 14th. So, depending on the readiness of the candidates, you could have been bombarded 27 minutes ago. You likely won’t hear anything from me until Tuesday, or possibly later as it may be some time before I’m able steal platform points from other candidates and warp them into rhetoric that appeals to uninformed, apathetic voters.

  24. Anonymous on February 6, 2008 9:47 pm

    hahaha
    “never let a physicist explain politics”
    darren does have a point tho. there are too many good candidates. oh well, i guess for once we’ll have a qualified vp. admin.

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