The Dalhousie Student Union voted in favour of holding a byelection to replace president-elect Bianca Morelli.
In a March 26 email to the Dalhousie Gazette, Morelli said she intends to resign before the start of her presidential term to take a job with Ontario’s government.
Voting for the byelection will take place online from April 12 to 14. Students are only voting for DSU president; all previously elected officials will remain in place.
Special council meeting
The DSU held a “special council meeting” on March 28 to decide how to move forward after Morelli announced her resignation as union president for the 2025-2026 academic year. She was scheduled to take office on May 1, 2025.
Since the original election results are not official yet, Morelli’s resignation is considered a disqualification according to DSU President Mariam Knakriah.
DSU Chair Alexa Colwell said the union has never dealt with the president resigning before taking office, so they “don’t have the most set in stone policy.”
The DSU council voted to hold a byelection, giving students the opportunity to vote for president again. The decision was made after council members debated whether to hold the byelection or amend union policies to make second-place candidate Matt Lawton president.
Amendment concerns
Meeting attendee and Dalhousie University student Maren Mealey said amending the policy to make Lawton president “feels close to dodging around the democratic process.”
“I think that students should be able to exercise their democratic right to elect a leader,” Mealey said. “In this situation, they did have a choice and then one of the choices got removed. So they did not in fact elect the second option.”
Meeting attendee and Dalhousie student Ruby Swartz worried that Lawton didn’t get 1001 votes — the minimum a candidate needs to be elected president.
“It’s not like we’re putting another person who met the minimum in [as president],” Swartz said. “It would be a candidate who didn’t actually meet the minimum requirements to be elected.”
Knakriah said it doesn’t matter that Lawton didn’t get 1001 votes, because he is the second-place candidate. The election is considered complete because Morelli met the minimum.
According to Colwell, the winner of April’s byelection would still need to meet the 1001 minimum vote requirement.
Ryan Dee, a Board of Governors representative, pointed out that Lawton received under 35 per cent of the total votes for president.
“It makes a lot of sense to go back to the students and see what they want to decide,” Dee said. “It just does not feel right to appoint someone who did not win the majority of the votes or an appropriate number of votes in the previous election.”
Advantages and disadvantages
Council members, including Nick d’Entremont, vice president academic and external, worried the byelection would be “rushed” and voter turnout wouldn’t be high enough to meet quorum.
“I am concerned about the time crunch that we’re in and the ability for us to secure enough engagement and participation from not only voters, but from candidates who are well-suited for the role,” said d’Entremont. “I don’t know if either option is necessarily very democratic, because we’re just gonna be pushing through a really rushed timeline.”
Knakriah was conflicted.
“I’m literally not sure what the right thing to do is, because they both have advantages and disadvantages,” she said.
Voting
Eight council members voted to move forward with the byelection, passing the motion.
William Jones, vice president of finance and operations, was the only council member to vote in favour of amending the policy to make Lawton president.
Lawton did not attend the meeting.
Presidential nominations reopen on March 31 and close April 3. Potential candidates didn’t need to run in the original election to run in the byelection.
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