Associated Students of Madison members proposed an amendment to University of Wisconsin’s election day policy to the Faculty Senate for consideration that would extend excused absences for student election officials to include early voting periods, according to ASM vote coordinator Alisha Latham.
The amendment was proposed March 23 by Latham, shared governance chair Genevieve Lambert and intern coordinator Allison Breitzmann with the intent of expanding UW policy II-110, according to Latham.
As the policy stands, it only requires excused absences for student election officials on election day only, according to Latham.
“Especially on campus, students really stepped up and filled a lot of those [election official roles,]” Latham said. “The language in how the policy is currently written really limits students to only be able to get [excused] absences from class on officially marked university-recognized election days.”
Wisconsin uses a system called in-person absentee voting, which allows voters to cast their ballots starting 14 days before the official election day until the Sunday before, according to Badgers Vote.
UW students started working more regularly as election officials during the November 2020 general election to fill in gaps left by more traditional election officials who tend to be older, due to heightened fears about the impacts of contracting COVID-19, according to Latham.
About a year and a half ago, Latham said the three ASM members started looking into the policy further as the number of students working as IPAV election officials continued to increase. Lambert brought the concerns to the secretary of the faculty Heather Daniels shortly after, according to Latham.
“The Faculty Senate’s the large deliberative body for faculty governance on campus,” Daniels said. “They are the decision makers in some areas, like their policies and procedures, academic calendar … pass resolutions about things that they don’t necessarily control, but they want to share their opinion on.”
In order to introduce a proposal if you are not a part of the Faculty Senate, it must be brought forward to the general membership through a committee, by a senator or via petition of ten faculty members, according to Daniels.
Latham said her group presented the proposed amendment to the university committee for consideration to receive feedback and potentially find a faculty co-sponsor. They had previously secured a Faculty Senate co-sponsor, but the co-sponsor had to take a leave of absence and is no longer able to do so, according to Latham.
“[University committee] were pretty receptive,” Latham said. “We have a very civically engaged campus, and most professors are very willing to work with students that are election officials. Obviously, they had their questions … [but overall,] they seemed like they were pretty willing.”
One of the questions raised by the university committee concerned students who may abuse the amended policy’s expansion of excused absences by repeatedly working at IPAV locations during class on purpose, according to Latham.
Latham said they are open to changing the language of the proposed amendment to mitigate abuse of the policy before presenting it for a vote before the entire Faculty Senate.
“Student election officials, they know how it works to have to miss content,” Latham said. “They know that they’re not going to be able to attend class if they’re working. And, you would be very, very hard pressed to find a student election official who would be working every single day of IPAV.”
Student election officials are working an average of three to six days during the IPAV session, in addition to election day, which would leave a small window to miss content repeatedly, according to Latham.
In its current form, the policy requires students to notify professors of their absence on election day two weeks in advance, according to UW policy II-110. The proposed amendment would require students to notify professors of their absence two weeks prior to their first IPAV shift, according to Latham.
Students will also be required to take responsibility for managing how content missed during IPAV shifts will be made up in an updated version of the proposed amendment, according to Latham.
“The onus is really going to fall on a student election official to have to make up that work and plan when that work is going to be made up, instead of a professor kind of having to work on the back end of ‘how do I catch the student up on content,’” Latham said.
The amendment also proposes that the legislation’s language, which states professors will try to keep election days free of any major assignments, be strengthened to require that professors will certainly keep election days free from major assignments, according to Latham.
The proposal is lying in wait until it can secure a cosponsor from the Faculty Senate, at which point it would go before the entire body for a vote, according to Latham.
Faculty Senate meets once a month during the academic year from October to May, according to Daniels. Meetings are open to the public for those who are interested.
“We’ve had some interest [in cosponsoring from Senators], but obviously this is kind of a very busy time of year,” Latham said. “It would be presented at the next faculty senate meeting after we secure the co-sponsor.”
