Were you wondering how so many people were said to have voted in the AMS elections, but it did not fit your experiences with apathy on campus? What could explain the bizarre difference in votes between some candidates? I wrote an article about the AMS elections after the results were announced, commenting on how the results seemed anomalous. There were at least two conclusions we could draw without research: some people had incredible campaigns and spent an incredible amount of time, helped by their many volunteers harvesting votes through very convincing class announcements, or fraud. Fraud ended up being confirmed, but a very scant in detail report by the Elections Administrator declared that the elections for executives were “not affected” by the fraud.
However, even if the results did not change, they were affected, since the vote differences between candidates, after the fraud was discovered, diminished. This is a clear indication that the people behind the fraud were voting more for certain candidates than others, and this indicates, no matter what the final results were, that the people behind the fraud were supporting particular candidates. Also, many student numbers were stolen, and if those students tried to vote, they would not have been allowed.
A rumor has been going around, from a supposed eyewitness report from a yet-unidentified person who was working at the Student Union Building at the time that the candidate for AMS President, Mr. Bijan Ahmadian, was aware that his opponent Natalie Swift, was ahead in the elections up until the last day, when he apparently took action. However, the scantness of the data presented by Elections Administrator so-called ‘forensic’ report, claimed that there was no foul play, even if the difference in votes between the two presidential candidates, diminished considerably after the fraud was (partially) uncovered.
The message now seems to be clear for students – try to stay clear from AMS politics – you may not want to be associated with its current actions and ideologies. For instance, one of the first things that the new executive did was to ELIMINATE the NON-VOTING INTERNATIONAL STUDENT SEAT, and this happened after they cut off students with disabilities from a chance to speak on Council. They also made sure students who thought the price of tuition was a barrier to their education were prevented from speaking their minds when the issue was being discussed.
This silencing was spearheaded by the longstanding sciences councilor Tahara Bhate, who cut off a student who had to drop off from school because of the price of tuition. This student ended up speaking anyway, indignant with the utter lack of ability of councillors to listen to anybody but themselves. This is clearly beyond pathetic for an organization whose officials come out to claim they are open to listening to a variety of opinions. The contradictions are compounding, not receding, and it is fun to watch, although sad to realize it is a reality.
It has been announced by the Elections Administrator that someone used a single computer with a single IP to cast almost 800 votes. An investigation was or is being conducted, but fraud is crystal clear, since all the votes were cast from the same computer within 3.5 hours. It is still undetermined who these votes were cast for. In addition, this opens up the door for the possibilities of more frauds happening, and definitely it should indicate a conspiracy and a clear slate. The people who should be fearing the most are those who were elected with anomalous margins of difference from other candidates.
In 2009 a campaign violation and possible fraud was flagged, but the eyewitness was somehow discredited and the issue was forgotten. I noticed that the reports from the EA regarding the frequency of votes seemed anomalous, and people celebrated it as a newly revived student culture, but, at the end, it all turned out to be a fraud, orchestrated in behalf of people who are now most likely in office and making decisions on behalf of the student body.
This news is by far much worse than the UN complain, because, this time, we have a clear crime: student numbers were stolen or collected illegally and someone broke into the system and performed the fraud. The implications of such an act to the reliability of the current system are catastrophic. The electoral code is very clear also that any fraudulent or irregular occurrence performed by someone who is an associate of a candidate is considered the responsibility of the candidate. By the end of this ongoing investigation we should be able to know at least whose student numbers were stolen and where they came from.
To steal almost 800 names and to manually enter them on a single computer within 3.5 hours does not sound like an easy task. What worries me more in the possibility of having other smaller frauds occurring concurrently through similar methods shared by the conspirators of the illegally benefited slate. If from one computer they could vote almost 800 times, imagine what they could do from a bunch of different computers, in smaller doses. What we know for a fact at this point is that fraud should explain the anomalous number of votes cast for particular candidates who swooped certain races with unseen differences.
RECENT FRAUD HISTORY:
Fraud in the AMS elections may have a longer history than we now suspect. Council sent the wrong message to the student body when they allowed a VP Academic candidate who got caught voting for himself multiple times (Alex Lougheed) to still hold the seat, even after being caught defrauding the system and with a student court case hanging over his head, brought out by Nathan Crompton, who was the main victim of Lougheed’s fraud. The Student Court decided to get rid of the defrauder, but the AMS Council overruled the Student Court’s decision to protect their long time friend Alex, who had been a very active Sciences councillor. This was, most likely, a very bad historical move. In the eyes of any serious distanced observer, it could be seen as a conspiracy to support someone for emotional reasons rather than to make the right thing. In the best possible light, this was a move to protect a friend from public humiliation who made a terrible mistake. On the other hand, it was a disservice to the students who had voted and those candidates who followed the rules.
In addition, there could be other people voting multiple times for Lougheed, and this was never investigated nor established. In any case, the message that fraud is acceptable, at least subliminally, was passed along. This message also eroded the trust anyone could ever have with their ‘elected’ council members. There were rumors that seemed like truth to people who told me about fraud in elections previous to Lougheed, in particular in a Board of Governors race. At this point we could even imagine that Lougheed learned from and was inspired by this previous fraud before conducting his own violations, but got away with it, which is incredible, despite the Student Court’s decision to strip him from the position. I remember that when Matt Filipiak, the GSS President in 2007, brought me out to watch an AMS Council session, Alex was the one council who came up with the most critical comments regarding anything that came onto the table. From my personal perspective and what I witnessed, my impression was that most of the ‘discussion’ (i.e., grandstanding) that went on and one seemingly forever could have been avoided with better communication. I began participating and observing what was going on and came up with lists of problems. When I joined one committee and went to a meeting, I realized that it would be very hard to break through the hard shell that had solidified between people who saw themselves in privileged positions and were not open to anyone else’s ideas.
What concerned me at that time of the first VP Academic fraud detected (2008) was the possibility of other people having voted multiple times for a particular candidate at any given time. A candidate does not usually work alone, and should be expected to represent the interests of his or her friends in office – after all, their friends are their social realm, not the student body. Nobody really knows the entire ‘student body’ – it is an abstraction, a myth, and, sometimes, statistics.And students, apathetic in general, or suppressed, did nothing, had no time, or lost faith in the system.
There are a lot of possibilities we can predict can come out of a full investigation of this fraud, but I would like to explore some of them. The fraud seems to explain the anomalous difference between candidates within the same race, for one thing. It also explains the apparent growth of political engagement and interest on campus. The crucial data, however, should come from the details of whose student numbers were stolen (from which lists, classes, faculties, etc), whose computer it is, where was this computer located at the time of the fraud. Also, who were the beneficiaries of the fraudulent votes?
I would expect that the defrauders would at least be smart enough to cast some votes in the ‘wrong’ direction as a decoy. If an election is expected to be close, defrauders could expect that 300 fraudulent votes would make a difference, so they don’t cast all the votes for the same candidates. The reason for this is simple. In the case that the fraud is flagged, all that the candidates who benefited from the fraud have to do is dissociate them somehow from the defrauders by pointing out that defrauders cast a number of votes for their opponents who lost.
This is maybe the best they would be able to come up with if the differences between votes cast in one direction through fraud is not very significant. Another smarter possibility even comes to mind. A main decoy fraud is orchestrated to hide smaller frauds from view. For instance, a big fraud is set up where there are not a lot of differences between votes cast in either way, in order to denounce the online voting system, whereas, in fact, the real fraud happened through paper ballots. We know that the communication between ballots is so poor that it would not be inconceivable for someone to have a bunch of their friends vote multiple times in different stations.
In the case that the defrauders never expected to get caught and did not have any preventive plans, we shall see votes cast in a single direction, benefiting particular individuals quite clearly. Students should be very worried in any case, for they are clearly the victims in this case, and may not even be told about it. Another very interesting data we can expect from this fraud is to which VFMs most votes were cast by fraud. I wonder what sort of correlations we may be able to see between candidates and VFMs benefited through fraudulent votes. Another possibility we have to consider is that fraudulent votes were cast only for the benefit of particular VFMs and not for candidates because of the money involved. I was ready to forget the AMS even existed, but the news of the fraud is something that should open students’ eyes and perhaps awaken them into political participation. After all, people may be using their AMS fee money without their consent, and having had, at least for about over 700 people at this time, their student numbers stolen and votes cast in their names.
CONCLUSION:
As we all know, probably nothing will happen to the culprits, and their possible association with members of the current executive who clearly benefitted from the fraud (i.e., vote count differences diminished), will never be substantiated or investigated, even though the electoral code is quite clear that anyone doing anything illegal on behalf of candidates is the candidates’ own responsibility. Rumors will remain so, and students somehow were tricked far enough to elect someone for president who has a well established track record of voting AGAINST students – in favor of the failed underground bus loop, for raising tuition, for cutting off the students with disabilities seat, and for eliminating the International Student seat on council, and also for supporting the notion that protecting places like the farm from commercial development means an attack on academic freedom – he was also never for a “24-hectare” UBC Farm, and argued against it when he ran for the Board of Governors and won last year. How is it possible? Your answer is as good as anyone else’s! Perhaps UBC is “ultra-conservative” as many say, but perhaps it is just “uninformed” and “too busy to care” – the latter is probably the best attitude you can hold since the system seems damaged beyond repair at this point. What we know for sure is that you can always find entertainment with things associated with the AMS, if you are looking for confusion, contradiction, grandstanding, fraudulent issues, and absolutely biased media covered (done by buddies for buddies’ sake). There are better forms of entertainment, however, that will beat an AMS Council meeting anytime – pretty much anything you can think of, including blowing air through a straw into a water cup – but we suggest arts and crafts, and some time on the beach, perhaps naked, perhaps clothed, but in conjunction with some skim board and kite surfing.
UBC Student Media 