From Monroe Hall, where student election results were announced last Friday, it at first looked too close to call whether more Dunkin' Donuts or people were in attendance. If you heard nothing about this, fret not. Few did, as rushing through a PowerPoint of election outcomes on a Friday, like a loathed discussion section, is just the latest of publicity blunders from the University Board of Elections, or UBE.
Ironically for an organization which oversees student elections, the UBE is - go figure, or did you see this one coming - appointed by an oligarchic selection committee. This Hoos Who of life on Grounds includes the Student Council president, the chair of the Honor Committee, the chair of the University Judiciary Committee and the president of the fourth-year trustees. The last seat is reserved for the outgoing UBE chair, who must have invited himself to this high stakes table. Together, this committee amounts to just another squeeze of the fifteen secretarial minutes of fame for these student connoisseurs of committees. For those concerned that this selection committee exerts too much influence on the election board, they can rest assured the UBE does little.
Or maybe we are being too hard on them. UBE gets the word out about voting, as evidenced by this year's 33 percent participation rate which was, after all, up from last year's 32.
This negligible rise in voter turnout ran against a voting window which was actually shortened this year from last. After years of scheming, weeks of flyering and whole days of doing interviews on the part of the candidates, the actual slot in which students could cast their votes began Monday, Feb. 20 and originally was scheduled to end that Thursday, until a glitch in the online voting pushed the deadline to 1 p.m. Friday.
Having one election day or, as was the case last year, an even longer period lasting through Sunday would make sense, but a chunk of the week will not cut it. 1 p.m. on a Friday is when most students would be just freed from class obligations to sit down and ballot up, and ending the voting period so abruptly makes it seem as if the UBE doesn't want our votes.
The problem with UBE across the board is publicity. Few students were aware of the shortened time slot to submit their ballot. As noble as it was for the candidates themselves to remind us to vote, the existence of the UBE means this should not have been necessary. An organization ordained to oversee our elections should be given and should utilize as many resources as its candidates to ensure the one event it plans all year goes smoothly.
Not to mention the composition of the results themselves was transmitted poorly. It was not made clear in the voter guide how many winners would come out of races when multiple spots were open. Moreover, races with only one winner were organized along rounds, and further preferences were redirected to corresponding candidates in successive wave pools of voting. Hence, those who voted first for candidates who ended up having the least amount of votes in the first round saw their second-place votes subsequently distributed in the second round. After the second round of voting, those whose first or second preference fell on the candidate now eliminated saw the next mark in their preferences assigned accordingly, and so on. While confusing, this is okay, and legitimate, but students should have been told beforehand the consequences of what preferences they did or did not hold.
The UBE does little all year and does not show up when demanded. Well, to whom can we go to vote this board out?
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