It turns out the referendums weren't alright after all.
Less than a week after the Associated Students of Madison announced the Wisconsin Union Facilities Improvement Plan failed and the living-wage referendum passed, its Student Judiciary ruled late Sunday to nullify both results.
According to ASM, students will now vote on the two referendums in the fall semester.
The decision came because the University of Wisconsin's Division of Information Technology — which conducted the now-infamous electronic balloting — failed to account for 436 votes.
"The right thing happened here," ASM Chair Eric Varney said of Sunday's ruling. "What it means for every student on this campus is they're going to be allowed a chance to vote in the fall and their vote is going to count in the referendum."
Justice Tim Leonard, who also chairs ASM's Student Elections Commission, said the Student Judiciary decided it does not matter that the 436 votes unaccounted for would not have been enough to sway either election, as it was the process and not the result that mattered.
The Union renovation plan failed by 695 votes, and the living-wage referendum passed by a margin of 2,108.
"ASM does care about the voice of every single student and that every single vote does matter," Leonard said. "ASM proved that tonight, and I'm very proud of that."
Not all UW students share Leonard's pride in ASM, however. Sunday's decision is the latest in a string of election postponements and cancellations, all of which seem to stem from technical difficulties in the electronic-balloting process.
Newly elected Dane County Board Supervisor Ashok Kumar, who is also a member of the Student Labor Action Coalition, which sponsored the living-wage referendum, said he disagreed with the Student Judiciary's rationale that the 436 votes in question should matter.
"The living wage, I mean, I'm shocked about the fact that they're throwing it out," Kumar said. "They're saying [436] ballots were lost, [but] the difference in one election was twice that, and the difference in the other election was five times that, so it doesn't make any sense."
While Kumar expressed shock with the Student Judiciary's ruling, Wisconsin Union Directorate Vice President Shayna Hetzel said she was pleased with the decision both because of her belief that every vote should be counted and because of her organization's unique perspective.
"We're excited to see what new direction this takes our campaign," Hetzel said. "It is a chance for us to go out and give more information and get more of the campus involved in our project."
Looming in the background, of course, is the newly formed Student Government, which makes no secret of its desire to supplant ASM as the official shared-governance voice of UW students.
Steve Schwerbel, spokesman for the new organization, declined to comment on whether the Student Judiciary made the correct decision Sunday night.
Rather, he said it is the latest black mark on a process that has been "ridden with errors."
"If there are any students who still believed until this point that ASM could be fixed, could be somewhat relevant, I hope they finally see at this point there's no way forward within ASM," Schwerbel said. "It's really a pity that we have such a dysfunctional government."
Despite the postponement of the referendums until next fall, Leonard said the candidate portion of the ASM election will proceed this week as planned. For the time being, ASM has abandoned the beleaguered electronic-voting process in favor of paper ballots.
"The Student Elections Commission and the ASM staff and I have been working tirelessly from sun-up to sun-down to put together a paper balloting system from scratch," Leonard said. "So far, everything's working out great."
