Wednesday night was a historic night for ASM elections in terms of voter participation. The turnout: 14.7 percent. It’s pretty epic. Under 6,000 students took five minutes to decide – from their computers – the students who will represent their interests, spend their segregated fees and advocate their causes.
For those of you who voted, here’s a pat on the back from a fellow voter. For those of you who did not (the vast, vast majority of students on this campus), I would love to hear your reasons.
Please feel free to rail against ASM, to say you didn’t have time or that you didn’t know the candidates. I mean, if ASM hasn’t been your favorite governing body in the past, now would not be a terrible time to try to change that by voting in new members. And if you have a slew of exams or papers or anything else, I’m sure you’ve been studying around the clock for the past few weeks when all the candidate information was up, and Monday through Wednesday when the online voting invitation was sent out.
I am being sincere here, even if my tone implies a certain amount of mean-spirited sarcasm. I would truly love to hear your rationale for not voting because I think it’s an important phenomenon to understand, not only for ASM elections but for the general political process as well. Students typically don’t vote, causing the people trying to get elected or reelected to not pay all that much attention to us.
But to push myself from my soapbox (as I’m sure many of you would like to do in actuality), a quick look at the results of the ASM election proves interesting. First, of the “Share the Governance” slate, 8 of the 13 candidates won their elections; a win rate of 61.5%. In Letters and Science, which has the most seats on ASM, of the 12 who won seats, 5 (41.7%) were from that slate.
That’s actually a pretty impressive result for a coalition with more members running than there were seats open. Additionally, all but one of the five elected are now freshman representatives, yet two incumbents were not reelected. These results speak either to a group that managed to resonate with the voting portion of the student body or to a group that had the manpower to thoroughly chalk Bascom Hill. I would hazard to say the former.
On the referendum, perhaps the most contentious measure on the ballot was the renewal of United Council funding. The other measure, changing the ASM constitution to effectively allow students to serve three years instead of two by not counting the first year of service, was less publicized.
Personally, I voted for the United Council and against the constitutional amendment. I have no problem with students serving three years on ASM, but I do think that if that’s what you want to do, you should amend the bylaws to let students serve three years and then sell that change to the student body. Couching the change in convoluted language and then slipping it in virtually unnoticed is just not quite the way I like my politics.
The student leadership we have right now is incredibly important as the state budget process moves forward and the New Badger Partnership is (potentially, but probably) implemented. You may not care, but the people who were elected by a small portion of your peers will make the decisions that will impact you whether you recognize it or not. Take a teeny bit of time away from your workload and look at the platforms people ran on. Take some time to figure out what you think about the issues facing this campus right now. If you ignore that call to pay attention, to think critically about events happening around you, you give up your voice.
Elise Swanson ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in political science and English.
