After two disastrous student elections last semester and even more controversy this time around, the Associated Students of Madison needs to figure out what the student body already knows — that they are the collaborative body that they claim to be when it comes to elections.
After the Student Union Initiative narrowly passed two weeks ago, six members of ASM questioned the validity of the initiative and filed a lawsuit last week against the Student Election Commission. The plaintiffs claim that the information provided to University of Wisconsin students about the initiative was misleading and cites several infractions with the ASM Constitution, according to ASM member Patrick Elliot, one of the petitioners in the case.
According to David Lapidus, another of the six petitioners in the case, the misleading portion of the initiative lies in the false impression that students have complete control over non-allocable segregated fees, which is where the majority of backing for the initiative would come from. In reality, the current UW chancellor has veto power over every budget ASM approves, so the student vote is more of a suggestion than an initiative, a tidbit that many voters may not have understood.
Mr. Lapidus also said there is an ASM bylaw requiring "free and fair" elections, and added that the lack of campaign-finance regulations in ASM elections prevented that from happening. Maybe instead of dedicating the thousands of dollars spent on promoting the Union referendum, the initiative coordinators could have put the money and resources toward the actual cost of the Union renovations themselves.
The election was unfair for other reasons as well. It is slightly ironic that the first two elections last spring were hosted online by DoIT and were open over the course of several days. Anyone with access to a computer could quickly cast his or her vote. This semester though, simplicity and accessibility were not available due to the technical glitches that the system revealed. After making attempts to fix last year's mistakes, ASM introduced the failed initiative yet again this semester.
With only four polling locations on campus open for six-and-a-half inconvenient hours each day over the course of two days, the long wait was not worth the time for many students. After the Student Union Initiative failed twice last semester with votes from 22.4 percent of the student body, who actually thought that it would pass this time? Well, ASM outsmarted students and with its massive campaign effort, convinced a measly 6.59 percent of the student body to vote despite and consequently claim victory by passing both the Living Wage referendum and the Student Union Initiative.
For those who did vote, results that should have taken ASM hours to tally took days because of ASM's method of assigning multiple votes to candidates on the Scantron sheets. The new Scantron voting system was supposed to save ASM time and technical glitches, but unfortunately went awry once again. The counting machines were worthless — just like the computer system from the spring elections — and ASM was forced to tally the votes by hand.
Like many students, I am not ready to give up the extra segregated fees each year so that other students will be paid $10.23 per hour and Memorial Union and Union South will undergo renovations and reconstruction that I will never see. Despite ASM's various election faults, it's nice to know that some members are actually concerned about students and are doing something about it. Regardless of the outcome of the lawsuit, one thing is for sure, ASM needs to figure itself out.
Joelle Parks ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in journalism and Spanish.
