Abhishek Shetty: USAC Election Board should extend physical campaigning period

Last Friday’s Undergraduate Students Association Council candidates debate was meant to be an important platform for uninformed voters to learn about the election. Instead, it turned out be a mutual-admiration society between overexcited supporters and their deities.

Although that might seem very similar to the crowds at U.S. presidential debates, the USAC candidate debates were supposed to be the first major outreach program during the campaign cycle for candidates to explain their platforms. The crowd, however, consisted of about 100 non-slate-affiliated viewers who watched the proceedings passively. Those viewers trickled out of the auditorium as the debate went on, with only a few left to watch the presidential candidates’ debate.

Other outreach programs such as “Meet the Candidates” and the endorsement hearing reach even smaller numbers of undecided voters. As a result, a large segment of the student body is left in the dark on campaign details, save for the candidates’ verbose Facebook posts on their platforms.

The serious and more far-reaching part of the calendar is physical campaigning, which began Monday. However, voting for the election began at 10 a.m. that day, just two hours after the start of physical campaigning. This affords students the chance to vote before they can even look at campaigning on Bruin Walk and Election Walk on the way to class. Naturally, these students might vote for the candidates endorsed by their student organization leaders if that’s the only voice they’ve heard. In effect, a calendar consisting of physical campaigning several days after the endorsement hearings encourages an oligarchy of student body leaders, long before students themselves hear from the actual candidates’ campaigns.

The student government currently controls more than $4 million in student fees and deserves an equivalent amount of attention. The current short campaign calendar prevents physical campaigners from reaching a larger portion of the student body. In addition, it sends out the message that the USAC election is only important enough to be mentioned on campus during the five voting days. The system also allows students to make uninformed voting decisions before they can even view the campaigning. To prevent this, the election board should bring forward the start of physical campaigning into the week before the election.

Starting physical campaigning earlier would help campaigns reach out to voters well ahead of the election. This would give students time to consider all the voting options before the polls open. The election board itself had expressed a similar sentiment in 2014, when then-chair Anthony Padilla ensured voting started a day after fliering started so students could reflect on the elections for one day. This short extension didn’t help increase turnout, but bringing physical campaigning forward in a similar way can definitely make voters more informed before they have the opportunity to vote.

This can also create a less chaotic atmosphere of campaigning on the days of voting, resulting in a relative period of campaign silence on those days. This would be slightly akin to the electoral silence present in countries such as Canada and New Zealand, where campaigning is banned on voting days to cool off tensions and balance campaigning.

Even history suggests that earlier physical campaigning improves voter turnout. 2011 was the last time leafletting started the week before voting, on the Thursday before the election. The turnout for the election was 38.1 percent – the second highest turnout in the past nine years and 8.5 percentage points higher than 2015’s turnout.

This move could also benefit candidates running on independent platforms. These candidates usually lack the support that Bruins United and its rival slate get from student organizations in terms of endorsements. An extended fliering period would reduce the importance of endorsements relative to campaigning, neutralizing the advantage received by the two main slates.

Election Board Chair Lindsay Allen said that the board doesn’t lengthen the campaign season by multiple weeks to avoid fatiguing voters. Asking for such a long extension would certainly be unreasonable, but even then, voter fatigue is considered to be a result of voters feeling they have too many elections to vote in. Longer campaigns aren’t generally a reason for voter fatigue, especially when voters have the convenience of voting online. The main issue here is that about seven out of 10 undergraduate students don’t vote. Even some who do are not fully informed of the importance of USAC and the election.

It is unlikely that the 29.6 percent of the student body that votes is going to be turned off from the election due to earlier or longer campaigning. Even if it were likely, the risk would be well worth it if that meant the other 70.4 percent of students became more aware of the importance of the election. The current campaign cycle, with campaigners popping up only during election week, only reinforces the belief that the USAC election is unimportant.

As radical as having a few extra days of annoying campaigners sounds, initiating a change in the campaign calendar would be a relatively simple process. Allen said that a small change in the campaign calendar, such as a week’s change, would be arbitrary. Taking into consideration an increase in voter turnout and better dissemination of electoral knowledge among potential voters, next year’s election board should attempt to bring forward the start of physical campaigning. Every campaign calendar put forward by the board needs the student government’s approval, and it is unlikely that the council members would turn down an opportunity to have their supporters sing their praises throughout campus for a few extra days.

For the benefit of the student body, the election board should extend a measure that can give USAC and the election as
much visibility on Bruin Walk as those $1 doughnuts.