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Via Virtual Meeting room
Report Number 99 Of The Elections Committee
THURSDAY, MAY 30, 2024
To the Executive Committee,
University of Toronto,
Your Committee reports that it held a virtual meeting on May 30, 2024 at 5:00 pm with the following members present:
PRESENT: Mark Lautens (Chair), Firdaus Sadid, Mathangi (Indi) Gopinathan, Sarosh Jamal
REGRETS: Maureen Harquail
SECRETARIAT: Joanne Chou, Secretary, Timothy Harlick, Chief Returning Officer (CRO), St. George, Cindy Ferencz-Hammond, Assistant Secretary of the Governing Council and Deputy Returning Officer, UTM, Emma Thacker, Assistant Secretary of the Governing Council and Deputy Returning Officer, UTSC
OPEN SESSION
- Chair’s Remarks
The Chair welcomed members guests to the final Committee meeting of the governance year. - Report for the 2024 Elections for the Governing Council, the Academic Board, University of Toronto Mississauga and University of Toronto Scarborough Campus Councils and their Standing Committees
The Chair stated that there was considerable work related to election matters for the multiple constituencies for the Governing Council and Academic Board elections, as well, for the UTM and UTSC Campus Council and their Standing Committees. He added that, despite the complexity and multi-faceted nature of conducting the 2024 elections, the process was successful.
The Chief Returning Officer (CRO), Tim Harlick thanked Anwar Kazimi, former CRO, Cindy Ferencz-Hammond (Deputy Returning Officer, UTM), Emma Thacker (Deputy Returning Officer, UTSC) and Megann Davidson (Deputy Returning Officer, St. George Campus) for their roles in running a successful election.
Mr. Harlick provided an overview of the 2024 election process and results. He highlighted the development of a nominating management system (NMS) that had launched with this most recent election. NMS was developed based on the elections conducted during the pandemic, moving from a paper-based nomination process to an electronic-form based process that lacked an efficient method for capturing and validating data. NMS was developed to capture proper data analytics and had launched successfully in the current elections period. The CRO thanked the Governing Council Operations team that developed this new system.
The CRO remarked that in 2023, a web voting portal platform was introduced called Simply Voting that replaced U-elecT, and reported that the 2024 elections were seamless, and that Simply Voting would be continued to be used for future elections. In terms of appeals and campaign violations, the CRO noted that no election overseers was convened this election, and that there was a slight increase in the number of concerns raised during the campaign period that were related to campaign poster violations. The CRO commended the team for their swift and effective responses in addressing each of those issues, and concluded that the campaigning period remained fair and respectful.
Finally, the CRO noted that using the NMS reduced the DROs time associated with manual tracking of data and provided greater opportunity for community engagement during the nomination period. Data collected from the NMS, compared to previous years, also showed a promising trend in the initial participation rates for nominations. He also acknowledged the efforts of Jennifer Coggon, Vice-President of Events and Outreach of the Association of Part-Time Undergraduate Students (APUS) to encourage participation from their constituency. The CRO concluded his remarks by noting that despite the increased initial nomination participation, the voter turnout continued to be an area for improvement and focus for the Secretariat.
The Chair thanked the CRO and the Deputy Returning Officers. - Report of the Previous Meeting – Report No. 98, November 23, 2023
The report of the previous meeting was approved. - Business Arising from the Report of the Previous Meeting
There was no business arising from the report of the previous meeting. - Date of the Next Meeting: October 21, 2024
The Chair confirmed that the date of the next meeting would be held on October 21, 2024. - Other Business
No matters of other business were raised by members.
The meeting adjourned at 5:20 p.m.
June 4, 2024