The New Brunswick Student Alliance is sounding the alarm on voting issues for students during the provincial election.
Bibi Wasiimah Joomun, executive director of the NBSA, said after reaching out to students, they have concerns.
“We really wanted to comment and bring up that concerns that happened during the election period are voter suppression and that a lot of students feel like it is,” she said. “Some students have described it themselves, they’ve said ‘I feel like my vote has been suppressed.'”
That’s according to a report the New Brunswick Student Alliance prepared after receiving feedback from schools across the province.
NBSA asked people to reach out for feedback and some universities sent out a survey about their voting experience. All student unions the NBSA works with sent in reports from their students and results were also taken from social media interactive forms.
Among the issues mentioned in the report includes the lack of polling stations on campus or inaccessibility of polling stations.
According to many students, Elections NB staff at a Memramcook-Tantramar polling station “directly disobeyed directives from the Chief Returning Officer and turned away students who were within the 40 consecutive day exception” when they were returning students and eligible to vote.
“I have been physically in the province since May, and even though that is not a requirement, the polling officers were questioning if I had been in the province for the last 40 days. They severely doubted I had been in the province even though that’s not the requirement, they tried to deny me.” – 4th Year Student
Mount Allison students dealt with changing regulations regarding letters confirming residency where sometimes they were accepted and sometimes not. Staff also reportedly asked inappropriate questions and showed behaviour which intimidated student voters.
“The poll workers continuously belittled me, questioned my credentials, argued about if I was able to vote, discriminated against me because I was a student and threatened me with the oath on the bottom of the voter registration form.” – 2nd Year Student
Mail-in ballots were suggested for those who were uncomfortable about heading to the polls in person, however, voters report they did not receive their ballots or they received them too late to mail back or the ballots were sent to the wrong mailing address.
“I am from New Brunswick, but currently living in another province to attend university. I contacted ElectionsNB to request my mail-in ballot weeks in advance, they provided me with two phone numbers to call and both were not connected. I was finally able to submit the request by email and my special ballot arrived the Thursday before election day. My vote was never counted.” – 5th Year Student
Bibi Wasiimah Joomun, executive director of the NBSA (Photo: Submitted)
“A suggestion for Elections NB to really look into this content and hopefully put a public statement out there because now we cannot really change those concerns now that the election is done, but we would really like to see Elections NB take some action from that, go public and address those concerns,” Joomun said.
Joomun said she hopes Elections NB considers the report seriously and address the concerns.
She said the NBSA sympathizes that there was a snap election and Elections NB was anticipating an October election, however, this is the only job they do all year and could have had more preparation, especially communicating with staff. She said there should have also been more follow-through on mail-in ballots considering they were the ones encouraging people to mail-in ballots in advance.
“In the end, a lot of people were turned away from their constitutional right of voting which is a big deal when you look at it,” she said.
“I feel like this isn’t being told as openly and we want people to start recognizing that this happened and we need to start talking about it.”
