Quick comments regarding the results:

• Historically, voter turnout for MSA elections is around 10% – 25% of membership, which is relatively high for a student group. For comparison, the USSU itself had a participation rate of 8% for their elections this year.
• This year had the highest recorded turn-out for an MSA election at 54.5% of the membership voting. Jazakallahu Khairan everyone for taking part in the elections process!
• This year was the first time online voting was offered, so we were prepared for issues and hiccups. Alhamdulillah though, no technical issues occurred and the number of people taking advantage of online voting was significantly higher than In-Person voting.
• Despite it being the first time offering online voting, 95% of voters expressed satisfaction in the voting process (when asked to rate their election experience on the ballot). While voters overwhelmingly approved of the process, in my capacity as Elections Officer I will still be providing feedback to the MSA on how to build on this and improve for next year.

Detailed Information Regarding the 2023 MSA Executive Elections

Office of the Muslim Chaplain

My name Dr. Joel (Omar) Schindel, and I am the current Muslim Chaplain. I was born and raised in Saskatoon and reverted to Islam when I was 16. Both my parents are alumni of the University of Saskatchewan, and I did my undergraduate degree, medical degree, and family medicine residency at USASK as well.

My history of chaplaincy spans over a decade, including acting as an Associate Chaplain for USASK, Coordinator for the USASK Multi-Faith Chaplaincy Association, Chaplain for the Regional Psychiatric Centre. I’ve also provided Islamic education and consultation to the Saskatoon Police Service and the Saskatoon Public Schools.

Currently I am a Faculty Member in the Department of Academic Family Medicine at the USASK College of Medicine, as well as a Member of the Admissions Review Committee for the College of Medicine.

That is to say, I am a prairie boy through-and-through, I’ve spent half my life at USASK, all while being passionate about the Muslim community in Saskatoon!

Background

The Muslim Students’ Association (MSA) is a campus club at the University of Saskatchewan (USASK). It provides a vital service to the campus Muslim community, including arranging prayer spaces and advocating on behalf of Muslims on campus.

As per the MSA Constitution, elections for their executive are to be held this time every year. As the Elections Officer for this year, the Office of the Muslim Chaplain is responsible for implementing, supervising, and ratifying the voting process in a fair and impartial way. Eligibility for voting and running in the elections is based on Active Membership within the MSA based on the requirements of their constitution. The Elections Officer/Muslim Chaplain does not determine eligibility or status for membership. Questions regarding valid membership status can be directed to the MSA. The Elections Officer/Muslim Chaplain also does not determine date and time for the elections, this is determined by the MSA Constitution/Executive and is typically done after Friday prayers mid-April as it is the last time the majority of Muslim students are on campus.

The MSA provides services and support to all Muslims on campus, regardless of active membership within the student group. For example, utilizing the Musullah Prayer space or Friday prayer space does not require MSA membership. As such, historically membership levels are relatively low as compared to the total number of Undergraduate Muslims, as the only function membership provides is the ability to run and vote in MSA executive elections. Traditionally, the MSA Executive Elections are held In-Person after Friday prayers.

Voting Process

Voting is typically done with a simple ballot process. This year, however, the MSA was requested to allow for online voting. The MSA agreed, and in turn requested the Office of the Muslim Chaplain to create a secure site and process for online voting.

Voting took place on April 14^th, 2023. In-Person voting was conducting after Friday Prayers on campus and was done with a simple ballot process after verifying membership. Online voting was active between 12pm and 9:15pm the same day, through a secure online form.

Votes were tabulated and verified by the Elections Officer, and the results sent to the MSA on April 15^th for general release to the membership.

Voting Integrity and Security Concerns

Prior to the election, many students had raised concerns regarding the security and integrity of the voting process. While addressing some of these concerns falls under the responsibility of the MSA, I would like to acknowledge and address some of the concerns that were communicated to me:

• Some students were concerned about harassment and intimidation from other students, including efforts to find out their identifying information for the purposes of targeting them. They wanted to ensure their voting record would be kept private. Please note that individual voting record will not be publicly released (unless audited by the USSU, and then under the terms personal voting is not revealed beyond the auditors).
• Relatedly, some students were concerned about their names and information being publicly released, identifying them as being Muslim or part off the MSA. Some have family who are unaware they are Muslim and purposely do not reveal this information for safety reasons. As mandated by the MSA, the Elections Officer is required to keep the membership list secure and confidential, and I have made every step to do so.
• Concerns regarding eligibility of some candidates: As per the constitution, eligibility to run is determined by the MSA, and I would refer everyone to them. I have, however, in my capacity as Muslim Chaplain advised the MSA to be lenient and give leeway, which the MSA conceded and from my understanding allowed two people to run whose eligibility was questionable.
• Concerns regarding membership status: Membership Status is determined by the MSA Constitution and Executive. All questions regarding this should be directed to the MSA.
• Concerns anyone could vote online: this was a large concern from many students, including concerns that non-members could vote and concerns groups would be organizing to specifically target the online portion. Part of this was the fact that Name/NSID was not validated in the voting form, so theoretically any random information could be entered. More on this below, but rest assured non-validation at the time of voting was by security design and all votes were validated after the fact. Only validated and verified votes were counted, and any votes with fake information or non-MSA members was not.
• A large number of students expressed concerns that an outside, non-university group was attempting to influence the elections. In my capacity as Elections Officer, I can only impartially and fairly administer the elections for all membership and candidates, and refer all matters related to this to the MSA.

In general, my goal was to provide a fair and impartial election that protected the safety and security of MSA membership.

Voting Integrity Processes

To ensure the integrity of the voting process, a number of steps were taken.

In-Person

• Voters were ensured a private area to vote, free from intimidation or observation.
• Voters were validated against the membership list.
• The Ballot box was supervised and secured by two people at all times.
• The vote count was done with witnesses while being video recorded.
• All ballots will be kept and archived by Elections Officer for a period of at least a month.
• All materials were paid for and provided by the Elections Officer. All Elections Officers, personnel, and voting witnesses were provided by the Elections Officer. No material support was provided by any group or the MSA, nor were people compensated for their time.

Online Voting

• All costs for online voting, including hosting and creation of a secure site for voting, was provided by the Elections Officer. No compensation from any group or the MSA was provided. The site is owned and solely controlled by the Office of the Muslim Chaplain.
• The site and access is encrypted with an SSL certificate.
• The site was purposely minimalistic to reduce any potential security holes.
• Site security and safety was verified by Google’s Transparency Report service and SSLTrust. This can be independently verified by using those tools.
• The site was further obscured by making requests in robots.txt for aggregators and search engines not to index the site.
• Site traffic was recorded and documented, including location and IP address information. This includes visitors who did not fill out a voting form.
• Votes were both recorded in a secure database and emailed to chaplaincy@usask.ca through the USASK mail server, in real time. This means that votes can be independently verified by the site host and USASK IT.
• All votes include additional identifying information to ensure unique votes, including detailed session information and IPv4/IPv6 addresses of each vote.
• Names/NSIDs were NOT validated against the membership list in real-time (when filling out the form), as this may actually expose the membership list to the public. It would be trivial to enter someone’s information into the form to see if they were a member. As such, all entries were accepted, even if name and NSID information was left blank. Membership was validated after the fact, and non-valid votes were not counted in the final tabulation. All entries, however, were recorded and available for audit purposes.
• It should be noted that even with taking into account all non-valid and fake votes, the final results of the election would remain largely unchanged.

Auditing

As mentioned above, the entire voting process has been documented, witnessed, and validated beyond anything that would be reasonably expected for university campus club.

Should the MSA request in good faith, I will provide ANONYMIZED voting data, but I will not release identifying information to them due to the member safety reasons above.

Should I be compelled by the USSU, I will provide the full voting data including all identifying information and non-valid votes, provided they can guarantee identifying information will not be released or shared outside of the auditors (again, for member safety). Data can also be cross-audited by the site host and USASK Mail IT.

I am 100% confident in the integrity of the election and believe in the validity of the result.

Election Concerns

In my capacity of Elections Officer, I did observe a number of troubling issues, some of which warrant further investigation.

A large number of people expressed concern about the politicking and behaviour of others in the election. In my capacity as Elections Officer, I can only ensure the impartiality integrity of the election, and cannot necessarily mediate issues prior to the election. Matters regarding this are referred to the MSA, however I do feel this situation is atypical and should be investigated further.

A troubling concern was the large amount of traffic recorded originating from Toronto and Calgary. While some votes were legitimately cast (and validated) from Calgary, none were cast from Toronto. Site security was still maintained and there are no concerns regarding intrusion, but it is still puzzling.

Most troubling, however, were the screenshots I was recently shown of people calling for boycotts of the election and encouraging others to spread this messaging. Boycotting in of itself is not an issue and can be a legitimate form of protest. The legitimacy of a boycott is not the issue. The issue is when people encourage boycotting an election, but in turn take part in the election and vote. In my mind, this is unethically attempting to influence people from not voting to strengthen the voting power of a faction or group. As the Elections Officer is the only one with access to the voting data, I will continue to investigate this further. If I do indeed find individuals disingenuously encouraged and influenced people to boycott the elections and not vote when they themselves voted, in my capacity as Elections Officer I will report this to the university as an ethical violation of the Student Code of Conduct.

Further Information

Additional questions regarding the voting process may be directed to the Office of the Muslim Chaplain at muslim.chaplaincy@usask.ca.

Reminder that eligibility and membership questions should be directed to the MSA (uofs.msa@usask.ca).

Personal Thoughts

Everything above is said as part of my duties and responsibilities as Elections Officer. If I may, I would like to take off my Elections Officer hat and put on my Muslim Chaplain kufi for a moment and address the campus Muslim community from the heart, as I feel I need to address something that’s going on.

I have spent the better part of the last two decades at the University of Saskatchewan, including doing my undergraduate and medical degrees at USASK, as well as almost a decade of chaplaincy work. I first joined the MSA in 2003, 20 years ago! If I may make an obscure Lord of the Rings reference, I was there when we had to pray on campus in moldy closet with asbestos-labelled pipes. I remember when the Friday Prayer space was a fraction of space we needed. I remember a time when there was little-to-no advocacy for Muslims on campus, and the concept of religious accommodation for Muslims was unheard of.

And now, 20 years later, we pray in a gym! We have a Musullah with wudu stations! We have advocacy and representation for Muslims on campus in ways we’ve never had before. Yes, these are all not perfect, and there is still an incredible amount of work left to do to support Muslims on Campus, but I want to take a moment to recognize these accomplishments. And let me be clear, while I was indeed a part of a lot of these efforts, the success of them was through the combined and collective efforts of a united campus Muslim community striving for khayr. I am incredibly proud of the campus Muslim community, and grateful to Allah SWT for giving me the opportunity to be a part of it.

And I say all this to emphasize the fact that in my 20 years as part of the campus Muslim community, I have never seen a more divisive and hateful election. The extent that people are going to spread vitriol, make accusations, intimidate, and bully others is beyond anything I’ve ever seen.

The amount of time and energy people have spent maligning others is ridiculous. If people spent half that time volunteering with the MSA, I couldn’t even imagine how strong the Muslim community could be on campus.

I was advised some people were hiring lawyers in preparation for legal action. That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of! It is the month of Ramadan, where our Sadakah and donations are rewarded by Allah SWT exponentially. And instead, we’re spending money suing fellow students or fighting a student group whose main purpose is to arrange for prayer space? Astaghfirullah! If people are truly considering this, I humbly advise you to instead donate that money (either to the MSA if you truly care for it or any other place of your choice, just not a lawyers pocket!).

Let me let you all in on a little secret: you don’t have to have an official position to advocate and support Muslims on campus. You don’t need a title to volunteer for Ramadan Iftars or help set up prayer carpets for Friday Prayers. I did not have an official position when I helped document our original decrepit prayer room, and write letters advocating proper prayer space. I was not an executive when I first volunteered for Islam Awareness Week (back when it wasn’t United). I didn’t need a title to help fundraise for the MSA library in the Musullah.

Over the years, and especially during my time with the MSA, I did not agree with everyone I worked with. But we treated each other with a minimum amount of adab and respect. I sincerely implore the campus Muslim community to reflect on the last few months and ask ourselves how we got here. Let’s spend these last few blessed days of Ramadan in worship and remembrance of Allah SWT, and seek forgiveness for our transgressions. Let’s forgive each other and learn to work together to support Muslims on campus and the MSA, regardless of title and position.

Thank you for indulging me and allowing me to continue to contribute to the Muslim community at the University of Saskatchewan.

Jazākumā-llāhu khayran,

Dr. Joel (Omar) Schindel