The blind leading the blind
The blind leading the blind
Clueless candidates just might romance the naïve student vote… but you can stop them
Reid Southwick
News Editor
In the University of Calgary’s student union election last year, roughly 500 students voted for a rock. The six-foot-tall boulder placed third in the presidential race, beating out six human candidates.
Under the union’s election rules, a student who secures a nomination can remove his/her name from the ballot and replace it with a fake one. But if the so-called “joke candidate” wins the election, he/she would be disqualified on the grounds of misrepresentation.
Regardless, the campaign itself is fair game for any rock, pink elephant, blow-up doll or the like.
When I asked the union’s president, Brian West, what a rock’s electoral success says about students’ faith in their campus government, he said he didn’t know. But he suggested that joke candidates in general create some excitement around election campaigns, which could only be positive.
See the rest of the article here.
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