AMS election season’s underway, but most students won’t be represented by the results—a problem the AMS doesn’t seem to be fixing.
Last January, newly elected AMS President Jana Amer ironically stated “democracy has spoke,” as team JEA was elected with a 20.4 per cent voter turnout. In 2024-25 a standstill defined the election season, where team LOT lost a vote of confidence by Assembly members on Feb. 13, 2024. Finally, on Feb. 29, 2024-25’s executive team was elected at a Special Assembly, outside of the normal voting process students partake in. Going even further back to 2022, Team ETC won an uncontested executive election with a 11.5 per cent voter turnout—with Callum Robertson, vice-presidential (University Affairs) stating at the open forum: “Let’s show Queen’s that the student body is not disengaged—we are engaged.”
A student government that claims to represent more than 21,000 students can’t credibly do so while approximately 4,200 of them participate in choosing it. Until the AMS can engage and represent more than 20.4 per cent of the student body, its claims to student democracy remain incomplete.
The real question is whether or not Queen’s student body is disengaged, or, if the onus must be placed on the AMS for continuously failing to get more than 25 per cent of their students out to the ballots to vote for their future government. In almost all of the platforms in the past three years presented by the slated or de-slated teams, visibility of the AMS continues to be a priority. But, the argument is clear: the student body isn’t disengaged or apathetic—students just don’t know who the AMS is.
The AMS’s chronic low turnout isn’t a mystery—it’s the predictable outcome of an institution that most students only encounter once a year, if at all. Outside of elections and moments of controversy, the AMS largely operates in a parallel universe, one that feels bureaucratic, jargon-heavy, and inaccessible to the average student. Many students, including myself, until becoming involved with The Journal, couldn’t name a single AMS executive, explain what portfolios do, or identify how Assembly decisions affect their day-to-day lives.
When the governing body responsible for representing students is functionally absent from their academic and social experience, non-participation stops being apathy and starts being a rational response.
This invisibility’s compounded by the AMS’s reliance on symbolic outreach rather than meaningful engagement. Instagram posts, campaign slogans, and vague promises about “advocacy” can’t substitute for consistent, tangible presence within student spaces.
Elections are framed as moments of democratic celebration, but for many students, they arrive without context, urgency, or clarity. Voting becomes an abstract exercise, choosing between teams whose platforms feel interchangeable and whose authority feels distant. The AMS asks students to buy into a system that hasn’t done the work to make itself relevant to them first.
Blaming students for low turnout also ignores the reality of who student government currently serves best: those already plugged into campus politics. When turnout hovers around 20 per cent, elections become echo chambers—decided by candidates’ friends, faculty insiders, and a small circle of repeat voters. This isn’t broad representation; it’s self-selection. A government elected by such a narrow slice of the student body can’t credibly claim a mandate to speak for the other 80 per cent, especially when that majority was never meaningfully invited into the process to begin with.
There’s no easy fix for boosting voter turnout. But it’s time to address the deeper, systemic failure of representation within student government. When just 20.4 per cent of students elected team JEA, democracy didn’t speak; it failed.
This year’s election will show whether low turnout’s an accepted norm—or finally treated as the crisis it is.
Sarah is a 4th year Politics and Philosophy student and one of The Journal’s Editor’s in Chief.
Tags
2025 elections, AMS, AMS elections, Student Engagement, Voter Turnout
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