The Graduate Students Association Elections Board will reopen graduate student government elections to remedy technical problems that barred graduate students from voting during the elections.
Graduate students who have not already done so will be able to vote on MyUCLA from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. on May 1.
At the Graduate Students Association’s meeting last week, representatives voted to appeal the results because outages on MyUCLA prevented graduate students from voting online at intermittent times the Thursday of elections week.
The votes cast this upcoming Wednesday will be added to the current count, as a continuation of the elections.
Members of the Elections Board voiced particular concern that the outages occurred during Grad Bar, an event held by the elections director to increase voter turnout. The smallest number of graduate students voted on Thursday, relative to the other days of the elections.
Voter turnout fell just seven votes short of the 10 percent threshold needed for a referendum to pass when the elections closed April 15. As a result, a referendum to increase graduate student quarterly fees by $1.50 to support the Graduate Writing Center failed automatically, though the majority of voters supported the measure.
The Elections Board is composed of members from the 13 graduate student government academic councils and Daniel Goodman, the GSA commissioner of elections. Seven of eight members of the Elections Board present at the meeting voted to reopen the elections, with one opposing vote from a representative from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.
Kate Edwards, vice president of Anderson Student Association, said she did not support the decision because no graduate students filed formal complaints after the elections. Edwards said she thinks the election’s data was inconclusive and reopening the vote makes the Elections Board appear disorganized.
“The data we have is anecdotal and not based on anything statistically driven,” she said.
But other members of the Elections Board said they voted for the measure because the results of the elections were clearly in favor of passing the referendum, and student votes should not be altered by problems stemming from MyUCLA.
“The real issue is that we want to consider besides the actual results, was it a fair election? Did everyone have the right to cast a ballot that wanted to vote?” said Mike Cohn, administrative adviser to GSA.
The Elections Board plans to meet again May 3 to review the new election outcomes for the second time. The Elections Board will present the results at the next GSA forum May 8.
The GSA Elections Board’s decision to reopen voting is in clear violation of the GSA Codes which establish that the ultimate decision in this type of situation relies in the GSA Forum, which, by the way, DID NOT unanimously agree on the proposed resolution. In fact, it was only 4 forum reps that proposed the so-called appeal. It was implied that after the resolution was considered in the GSA Elections Board it will come back to GSA Forum for a vote, as established in our bylaws, but this did not happen. If the GSA Elections Board decides to go on with its illegitimate decision to reopen elections it will invalidate the whole election results.