Dear Editor,
I must say that I am quite disappointed with The Commonwealth
Times’ coverage of the Student Government
Association elections over the past few weeks. Every time I
picked up The CT, I thought I would see some scathing, yet
poorly written, letter denouncing the ballot issues and the
methods of the election committee’s certification of the Senate
results. Well, since I have yet to see such a letter, I thought
I should write one myself, and while I don’t aim to write
a poorly worded letter, I don’t kid myself that I can’t write.
In a perfect world, here is how things would have worked
in the Senate elections. When student voters got to the
Senate section of the ballot, they would have clicked on
the names of their selected candidates. There would have
been 17 official candidates on the list that voters could
have chosen and one write-in name slot (by entering the
EID). They would review their candidate choices and
submit them.
What happened instead is this: at the point at which
an individual’s EID was entered, that individual’s name
was entered on the ballot. I, for example, voted early and
just for kicks entered “spinkstj” in the write-in section. I
was then informed several hours later that my name was
on the ballot and people were voting for me. I thanked
them for their vote but told them there was no way my
name could be on the ballot because I had not gathered
any signatures or fulfilled the other requirements. I was,
however, proven wrong when a friend showed me the ballot
page for the Senate and sure enough, my name appeared
on it along with many others I did not see when I was
voting originally.
From my understanding, the problem
was while voters were presented with a
plethora of candidates they could click
on, the votes for the write-in candidates
were not counted. There were some
write-in candidates who had active writein
campaigns, and students actually put
those candidates’ names in the EID box
even though their names were on the
point-and-click ballot. Their vote totals
were therefore higher than candidates
like myself whose votes all came from
the point-and-click method.
It is extremely important to understand
that in this situation, several of the write-in
candidates could have gotten many more
votes from the student body. According to
The CT, there were 2,636 total votes in the
executive election. The highest vote-getter
for the Senate received 391 votes. I do not
think there are thousands of uncounted
votes lurking out there that would change
the results, but I do think there is a strong
possibly there were a few hundred that
could have swayed the results. It is also
important to note that (at least from my
knowledge) none of the write-in candidates
or voters were informed that their
votes were not going to count unless the
EID method was used. In addition, the
SGA election bylaws state in Article IV,
Section C, Paragraph 3: “No names shall
be changed or withdrawn from the ballot
once the election has begun, except in
the case of misspelling” and Paragraph 4
states: “The format of the ballot shall be
established at least one week before the
first day of elections and shall not change
after it has been established.”
My biggest problem is the election
certification is not a transparent process.
The elections committee had several
options. They could have certified the
election results as they were presented
and simply counted the point in click
votes that were cast to the original 17
and counted the properly entered EID
votes and called it a day. They could have
held completely new elections and every
one would be on the same footing. What
they decided to do was a combination of
both; the original 17 were confirmed as
senators and there will now be a run-off
election for the remaining eight seats (the
constitutionality of which I question).
I believe this is a fair decision, but I
also think it sets a dangerous precedent.
Let us imagine this exact same scenario
happening in two years, except in this
theoretical reoccurrence, two of the official
candidates got only five votes each and
there are four write-in candidates who get
more than five votes from properly placed
EID-entry method, and there are even
more candidates whose names appeared
on the ballot, but their point-and-click
votes were not counted. If we apply the
current decision to this theoretical case,
the Elections Committee would have to
certify all the official candidates, even
though other candidates received more
counted votes and many more candidates
votes were not counted.
I understand the Elections Committee
worked hard on this issue. I believe that
made it what was perhaps the best choice
out of several bad ones. I am not calling for
a brand-new election. However, I would
have liked to have seen more open dialogue
about how to handle this situation. It is
my hope that this letter sparks some sort
of discussion about how we might reform
the elections process to become more
transparent and more accountable.
-Tavarris J. Spinks