Polling for SSMU’s exceptional referendum period opened  on Tuesday, April 10.  The voting period features two referendum questions—one regarding the existence of the Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG), and the other concerning the online ratification of motions passed by the SSMU General Assembly (GA). Created following a two-thirds majority vote in SSMU Council, the exceptional referendum period runs until Monday, April 16, when Elections SSMU will announce the results.

QPIRG

QPIRG’s referendum question asks students to support the existence of the organization. Student support for QPIRG will allow the organization to enter into negotiations with the administration over the renewal of its Memorandum of Agreement (MoA), allowing QPIRG to keep its office space and student fee collection for the next five years.

Members of the organization have worked all year in preparation for their current MoA’s expiration on May 31. Students voted in favour of an existence question that QPIRG ran in the fall referendum period, but the administration invalidated the results, stating that the single question dealt with two separate issues—the organization’s existence and its bid to become opt-outable offline.

To avoid another invalidation, the administration proposed the wording of QPIRG’s new question, which asks only that students support the organization’s existence. Student fees will remain opt-outable only online.

Lena Weber, QPIRG board member and member of the ‘Yes’ committee, said that the most important challenge QPIRG faces this referendum period will be reaching quorum during such a busy time of the semester.

“We’re very confident that we have student support, but we [have] to get people out to vote,” she said. “Fortunately we have the campaign from last semester to build off of, [when] we reached out to a lot of people.”

According to Weber, if the question does not pass, QPIRG will cease to exist as a McGill organization and will no longer have access to their office space. They could try to return as a new student service, but that bureaucratic process could take a long time.

Even if students support QPIRG’s existence in this referendum period, Weber said that the organization will continue to struggle with increasing student opt-outs, and will be forced to scale back on their programming.

“We’re excited to put all of this behind us and then just continue to work on how we’re going to sustain ourselves as an organization,” she said.

However, chair of the QPIRG ‘No’ committee Elissa Brock argued that student money should not support the specific political views of organizations like QPIRG. She also said that only 39 per cent of QPIRG’s money supports student life on campus.

“The whole point of [McGill student] groups is to unite students on campus,” she said. “QPIRG didn’t start as a campus group. We think that the fee levy program should be going to student-run activities that support student activity on campus.”

Last week, the QPIRG ‘No’ committee received two sanctions from Elections SSMU, both dealing with online campaigning. One sanction dealt with “slanderous campaigning” for posting false information about QPIRG on the committee’s Facebook event, and the other  was for sending Facebook messages promoting the ‘No’ committee events page to ‘friends’ of the QPIRG opt-out Facebook profile. Brock declined to comment on the sanctions.

 Online ratification

The second referendum question proposes that all motions passed at the SSMU GA should be submitted for online ratification, and that the quorum of these ratifications be fixed at 10 per cent. The referendum was prompted by a survey in the fall, when 88.8 per cent of students indicated support for moving the final vote in the GA online.

Chair of the ‘Yes’ committee Kathleen Sheridan pointed to the current GA’s many problems, including the current unrepresentative nature of the GA, where quorum is only 100 students.

“The idea that 0.4 per cent can make a binding resolution on the other 99.6 is insane,” she said. “Feeling like my voice is being silenced because of my schedule feels innately wrong to me. Online voting will give me my voice back.”

Sheridan emphasized that the referendum will not change the basic nature of the GA and that students will still be able to debate and propose amendments in the GA before the motion is submitted for ratification.

“We think that this online voting system will actually strengthen the results coming out of the GA,” she said. “In fact it may encourage more people to get more involved in politics as they see these motions coming out of the GA.”

However, chair of the ‘No’ committee Chris Bangs suggested that 10 per cent quorum would be difficult to reach for non-controversial motions, and that this kind of online ratification will weaken the motions passed by SSMU since the majority of voters will not be engaged in the debate.

“A general assembly is a very community-based political choice,” he said. “You are there to make a decision as an individual, but you do so in the context of an event that’s shaped by a narrative and an experience that’s defined by the groups that [are] there. If you’re sitting at a computer screen clicking ‘Yes’ or ‘No,’ that is an individual experience.”

Bangs said online ratification would create additional bureaucracy and make time-sensitive motions impractical. Bangs suggested other ways of making the GA more effective, such as simultaneous online voting, secret ballots, and proxy voting.

“I think there are really good ways to make General Assemblies more representative so that more people show up and vote at them,” said Bangs. “I think that we should explore those first, without going to extreme and radical steps like this.”