Voting for the Graduate Student Association election begins
today at noon, and campaigning is in full force, though much of it
is not visible on campus.
The online election was promoted by e-mail and through fliers
from candidates that were posted and put in department
mailboxes.
Additionally, voting incentives, including a coupon for a free
tall coffee or soda for every voter, a $15 gift certificate to the
UCLA Store for every 50th voter and cash prizes for academic
councils with high turnout, encourage students to vote in what
candidates predict could be the election with the highest turnout
in recent years.
Jared Fox, a second-year graduate student in computer science
and current GSA president running for reelection under the GSA
Experience slate, said this year’s rivalry between two
opposing slates is the first he can remember in GSA’s recent
history.
Slates are groups of candidates with similar platforms who run
together to increase their chances of winning positions.
This year’s campaign, which is more contested than those
in the past, promises to be more visible, based on the funds
candidates are spending. Fox said last year he did not spend any
money campaigning, but this year he may spend up to $100.
Lisa Linehan, a first-year graduate student in social welfare
and an independent candidate for vice president of internal
affairs, said she also may spend up to $100.
Campaigning independently of a slate has allowed for greater
name recognition, she said, because she believes fliers promoting
slates confuse some graduate students.
Increasing participation by candidates is expected to increase
voter turnout from last year’s 17 percent, Fox said.
“In the past there have been slates, but sometimes people
that ran under a slate would be unopposed. It’s never been as
contested as this,” he said. “It’s possible that
the turnout will be very, very high.”
Fox said he anticipates the most visible display of campaigning
will be Thursday’s Election Grad Bar, a mixer aimed to
promote the elections. Until then he is relying on word of mouth
and fliers to promote his candidacy and his slate.
Fox added that his slate would not engage in any negative
campaigning and encouraged undecided voters to speak to him and
others who were involved with GSA this year, or knew most of the
candidates.
Linehan said she was also relying on word of mouth and high
turnout in her own department.
From conversations with graduate students, she said she realized
that many students do not know what GSA is, and awareness needs to
improve.
She believes her campaign has done just that.
“Hopefully I will win, but even if I don’t, I feel
that I’ve done something for GSA and that campaigning was by
no means a waste of time,” Linehan said.
Voting incentives, which have been used for at least seven
years, can cost GSA up to $2,400, but they have been deemed
necessary because fee referendums require a 10 percent vote to
pass.
GSA elections have had notoriously low participation, and the
elections budget must be passed months before elections, making
runoffs undesirable.
Linehan also said she believed the voting incentives would be
effective, and she advertised them on her fliers and through word
of mouth.
“While I would like people to vote for me, I really want
people to vote in general,” she said.
But Monica Sanchez, a second-year graduate student in the School
of Education and candidate for vice president of internal affairs
with the new slate Graduates Representing Educating Advocating
Transforming, disagreed, saying the incentives encourage voting for
the wrong reasons.
“I don’t want them to vote because of the free
coffee. I would rather like them to vote because they like what
I’m saying or what our campaign is about,” she said,
adding that her slate had not been promoting the voting incentives,
and instead campaigning on issues.
Sanchez said her slate has posted fliers, targeting its own and
neighboring departments. GREAT has not spent its own funds, but had
a party with about 20 guests who made contributions, and Sanchez
has been using office supplies she has at home.
GREAT’s interdisciplinary makeup is one of its strengths,
Sanchez said. The candidates are from the School of Law and the
School of Education.
Sanchez believes that aside from the fraction of the graduate
students who have been targeted in campaigns or know one of the
candidates, the rest of the graduate body is generally unaware of
the elections.
“One of our goals is to try to get those who don’t
know to vote, to give them information,” she said.