The University of Wisconsin's Division of Information Technology, in wake of two botched Associated Students of Madison elections, has made clear that it cannot vouch for much of anything at the moment. The only certainties we know to be true are uncertainties — it is uncertain how many people successfully voted in the first ASM election, it is uncertain which people had their referendum votes from that election successfully carried forward and it is uncertain how many successfully voted in the most recent referendum elections.

Not too long ago, the Student Election Commission was promising that before this whole scenario played out, every vote would be counted. At one point in time, ASM told us that every referendum vote had been counted. We now know that at least 436 such votes were never counted.

A group larger than the capacity of most campus lecture halls has been disfranchised, and there is no telling just how high that number might truly be. That the SEC, ASM and the Student Judiciary — fully well knowing this — are seriously considering going forward with the results of this heavily tainted election strikes simply as an outrage to the entire notion of democracy.

Those who angrily stormed a press conference in wake of the first botched election, crying that every vote must be counted, now seem content operating in a world where hundreds of votes go uncounted.

To be sure, this editorial board has no political interest in a new referendum election. We strongly endorsed that the Wisconsin Union Facilities Improvement Plan be voted down — which it was — and remain confident that the living-wage referendum, which we opposed, will be rendered moot by the UW administration.

Rather, we believe that there must be a new referendum election because more so than our belief in any one political subject, we stand behind the notion of democracy. And so long as it remains possible to count all of the votes in a small-scale, manageable election — not to mention even account for the total number of votes — we must consider the results of the referendum elections held on this campus both last week and this week to be something other than legitimate.