For someone who had just been elected Arts and Science Undergraduate Society president, Jacob Mantle didn’t do much celebrating.
He got the good news at AMS vice-president (operations) candidate Andrew Cameron’s house, but refused to speak with reporters or have his photo taken because he couldn’t reach his running-mate, vice-president-elect Dominique Vanier. He said he wouldn’t speak to a reporter until he found her.
Mantle and Vanier won the election with 54 per cent of the 3,501 votes. Their opponents, Rory Johnston and Amanda Charbon, garnered 28 per cent of the vote; 629 ballots—20 per cent of the total—were spoiled.
When the campaign began ASUS announced it was holding online voting during this year’s election, but decided Jan. 24 it wouldn’t work.
“We wanted to wait and make it so that the system, when it did come out, it would run near flawlessly,” said ASUS Chief Returning Officer Brooks Barnett.
ASUS had been working to approve the system with Queen’s IT Services, who said the system has security concerns that prevented it from running.
“Due to unforeseen circumstances … it was determined that this election wasn’t the right time to do it and we expect that it’s going to be hitting polling stations by next election, so next fall,” Barnett said.
“There was some issues regarding the system’s security features and … they’re not insurmountable. It’s just to rectify those. It takes more time and for safety precautions we thought we would wait ‘til the
next election.”
Amanda Charbon, vice-presidential candidate and ArtSci ’11, said she has no regrets about the campaign.
“I think it went extremely well,” she said. “We’re extremely happy for Jacob Mantle and
Dominique Vanier.”
She said the overall experience was positive.
“It was a long night but an inevitable one.”
For next year, she said, all she wants to see is the new executive follow through on its campaign platform.
“We really do wish them the most sincere of good luck.”
Elamin Abdelmahmoud, ArtSci ’09 and outgoing ASUS president, said he’s looking forward to beginning the transition process with the new executive and is confident in their abilities.
“I’ve had the pleasure of working with [Jacob Mantle] for the entire year,” he said. “He’s absolutely a phenomenal individual, his work ethic and his dedication to ASUS is phenomenal, so I’m really excited to work with him.”
Abdelmahmoud said he wants the next executive to expand the society’s charitable work.
“I really feel as though we should be growing our charity side,” he said.
“When we started this year we had 14 committees under our society chairs commission, which is the one that deals with charities across Kingston, and we are now up to 16, and I just really would like to see that number keep growing, because as a society we really help out the Queen’s name in the community.”
—With files from Erin Flegg and Anna Mehler Paperny
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