ONE OF the many differences between the former Soviet Union and the University'sStudent Council occurs on the subject of voting transparency. Contrary to conventional wisdom, while millions of Russians could ascertain the vote of their legislative representative, however rubber-stamped it might have been, thirteen years after the Soviet Union was officially dissolved our own legislative body here at the University still does not provide a public record of its representatives' votes. While Council has now sent a half-baked referendum on the topic to the spring ballot, the situation should have never gotten this far. Student Council should have changed its bylaws and thus avoided a lengthy and pointless process that will only serve to prolong the arrival of public voting records.
Voting transparency is an easy issue to comprehend. Council votes on dozens of bills and resolutions during their Tuesday night meetings. The push for voting transparency involves nothing more than recording the individual vote of each member and then subsequently releasing the overall voting records to the public. The records could be posted online and thus viewed by anyone. This is not a difficult task to accomplish; honestly all you need is pen and paper. Print out a spreadsheet of what Student Council is going to vote on that night (including spaces for issues that might come up), use a pen to scrawl an "x" in the boxes marked "yes," "no," and "abstain" next to each representatives' name, make a lot of copies and then take those copies, along with a sheet with the text of the bills, resolutions, etc. and make it available to anyone who wants one. But unfortunately, when it comes to Council, nothing is ever easy.
Council, as mentioned, has already dropped the ball twice on crafting a coherent mechanism to make the voting records public. The last time the measure was debated during the fall, the minutes from the Oct. 26, 2004 meeting reveal how truly pathetic Council is when it comes to accomplishing simple tasks.
Director of University Relations Peter Farrell requested to "delay the bill so that we can determine the best way to record the votes." Peter
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