Opinion
Just can’t DoIT
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Also by Badger Herald Editorial Board:
- The Invisible Man Award: Wyndham Manning (May 7, 2009)
- The People's Choice Award: Jacqueline Hitchon et. al (May 7, 2009)
- The Lifetime Achievement Award: ASM (May 7, 2009)
- Honest representation (May 5, 2009)
- Junger for ASM Chair (May 5, 2009)
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The Associated Students of Madison may no longer look to last week's massive electoral fiasco as the low point in the organization's relatively young history. No, the stunning events of yesterday may now officially be understood as marking a new low point for ASM.
After the former debacle led to the cancellation of all candidate elections because of voter disenfranchisement, the makeup elections — which ASM and the University of Wisconsin's Division of Information Technology were charged with running — have now, too, been canceled because of voting irregularities. Meanwhile, the referendum votes, which this campus had understood as being finally settled as recently as yesterday afternoon, are now also being called into question as inconsistencies emerged between the number of voters and the number of ballots recorded.
To be sure, this is a catastrophe of massive proportions for both ASM and DoIT.
Making matters more horrifying yet, DoIT — the campus' primary information technology resource — made clear during an emergency meeting of the Student Election Commission last night that it no longer can handle an online election and, rather, has recommended that voting in the candidate elections be handled via paper ballot.
In a move that can only be understood as disturbingly regressive, the SEC has followed DoIT's advice and moved the election to a paper ballot. Just when this will occur remains to be determined.
Let there be no mistake: DoIT has failed on the most extraordinary of levels. The technology organization created to serve students has now admitted that it cannot even serve the student body's government with a basic electoral source code.
Moreover, the prospect of paper ballots is frightful on multiple levels. This looks to be a nightmare scenario, as questions of due process will inherently be raised given the incredibly short window remaining for completing an election under ASM's own rules. A laundry list of logistical concerns are also upon us, including questions about the location of polling stations, multiple ballot forms that will have to be created to accommodate the various class- and college-based elections and some 40,000 ballots that must be printed. Beyond this, DoIT — an organization that has roughly zero credibility at this point in time — will have to be entrusted to run some sort of electronic ID scanning system to monitor who has voted.
This Board looks forward to addressing further details of this sadly catastrophic situation in the coming days. For now, we simply join you in stunned disbelief.
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Great editorial. I was there and could not stop from laughing at the utter obsurdity of the sitution. Here we have ASM planning on organizing an election that takes cities months to organize. We have DOIT, the same organization that screwed up three elections (the first one, the referenda, and now the candidate one). This is the same DOIT that screwed up the Freshman election two years ago TWICE. My question is: how many other elections have been invalid over the years? All I know is that with a paper ballot, the voter turn out will be so low, that the prospect of calling ASM a democracy will be a joke. Viva la Revolucion!
'Don't it' blows, and it always has. this is no surprise
I encourage those involved to do what they can to sabotage the paper ballot election from taking place before the constitutional deadline next week, then there will be no ASM.... and no one will even miss it.