USAC to revisit elections calendar amid voting period concerns
By amanda schallert
April 2, 2014 9:42 p.m.
Undergraduate student government officials plan to reconsider an elections calendar they approved last quarter after some expressed concerns about a shortened voting time span.
Polls are currently set to open for three days in May for the Undergraduate Students Association Council elections, though voting periods generally lasted four days in recent years.
The USAC elections calendar sets deadlines for candidate applications and timetables for when students are allowed to campaign and vote, among other scheduling items.
Anthony Padilla, the USAC Election Board chair, created the calendar and councilmembers unanimously approved it, along with the appointments of Election Board members, after about 10 minutes of deliberation and questions at a meeting Feb. 11.
Elections are now set to run May 6-8, on the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of sixth week.
“I wanted Monday to be seen as a time when students should be thinking about elections intellectually,” Padilla said.
At Tuesday’s meeting, some councilmembers said they are worried that lessening the time students have to vote could decrease voter turnout. On average, about 35 percent of students have voted in the past six elections.
Some councilmembers also said that they did not realize Padilla had shortened the voting period. They said they wished they had been able to review the calendar for a longer period of time before voting on it, since Padilla did not email out the elections calendar to councilmembers before he presented it at the meeting.
Padilla said he thinks the shorter voting time span will not have a significant effect on the number of students who vote.
“I don’t see a correlation between how many days there are and voter turnout,” he said. “I think it has more to do with how contested the positions are.”
Kris Kaupalolo, the adviser to the USAC Election Board, said at the meeting that elections have sometimes run three days rather than four in the past, and that voter turnout depends on a large number of factors in addition to the time span polls are open. He added that he does not know of any significant changes in voter turnout that resulted from previous three-day elections.
For now, the entire USAC elections calendar is available to students who have picked up candidate application packets or who go to the Election Board office hours. Padilla said the creation of an Election Board website was delayed, but he still plans to create a website before the USAC candidate orientation event on April 10.
Councilmembers said they hope to discuss the calendar again with Padilla at the next USAC meeting.
