Despite the University Board of Election's efforts to publicize and promote the University-wide elections, just 29 percent of students cast their ballots to elect their student leaders last week.
"We're a little discouraged by the voter turnout," UBE President Jennifer Kim said. With a combined undergraduate and graduate student body of 20,897 students, only about 6,060 students total voted during the one-week election period between Feb. 22 and last night. This year's elections even pulled in fewer students than last year, when 38 percent of students voted.
But these results were not because of a lack of trying, UBE officials said. In addition to facilitating the elections, UBE made significant efforts to increase voter turnout and give students as many opportunities and reminders to vote as possible.
"We worked closely with [Information Technology and Communication] to establish a message of the day on computers at the University libraries," UBE Vice Chair Ricky Zein said.
Additionally, the organization rented computers from ITC and set up voter stations where students could use computers to vote on location, such as at Clemons Library. UBE also provided beverages such as hot chocolate and energy drinks at these locations to lure students to the online polls.
Though UBE attempted to encourage turnout, it is not within the organization's responsibilities to facilitate such a program, Kim said.
"UBE's mission is just to run a fair election," she said. "We are not responsible for voter turnout. However, we realize that there must be voter turnout in order to have a fair election."
UBE is not sure whether it will implement additional programming events next year to further attempt to increase voter turnout, Zein said.
Kim said every student working with the UBE devoted a large amount of time and energy to making sure the elections were fair and successful.
"We put forth as much effort as possible with regards to increasing voter turnout," Kim said. "We explored all options possible but we can't control voter sentiment and a variety of other factors that all play a role"
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