USAC Election Board requests funds to give voter incentives in spring

The undergraduate student government Election Board is requesting up to $4,000 from the student government and the UCLA Student Union to fund voter incentives in the upcoming spring election.

The funding would be part of a plan to combat low voter turnout in the Undergraduate Students Association Council election. The Election Board’s discretionary funding proposal aims to attract 12,000 undergraduate student voters, with the chance to win a free drink from Associated Students UCLA, said Election Board Chair Shagun Kabra. Turnout in the regular spring election has fluctuated around 35 percent since 2008.

The plan would cost about $2,000 from USAC and $2,000 from ASUCLA to award about one in 25 students for voting, he said. Though the Election Board has its own budget for elections, the funding is sectioned off for specific purposes and cannot cover the costs of voter incentives. The board, however, has already received $600 in USAC contingency funds for the proposal.

At the meeting Tuesday, Election Board members presented to the council, but USAC voted with a vote 7-0-3 to delay any fee allocation until the next meeting, when the board is set to provide more options for potential incentives. Councilmembers reserved $1,000 in discretionary funding until Tuesday.

The proposal follows a 6 percent decrease in voter turnout in spring USAC elections from 2013 to 2014 and a low 13.6 percent voter turnout in fall during the special election.

In fall, some students criticized the Election Board for not publicizing the special election more after the small turnout failed to meet the 20 percent threshold needed to pass a fee increase referendum, causing a ballot referendum to automatically fail.

In a lengthy discussion Tuesday, some councilmembers suggested the Election Board incentivize attendance to educational events about the spring election instead of incentivizing the voting process. Kabra said, however, that he thinks the idea would be ineffective because students outside of USAC rarely attend the Election Board’s events.

“The sad story is that the only people who know about USAC are people in USAC,” Kabra said at the meeting Tuesday.

The board has already reached out to the ASUCLA Board of Directors about the funding request, Kabra said. ASUCLA could not immediately be reached for comment for this article.

Kabra said he was frustrated at the meeting because he thinks councilmembers did not offer viable alternatives to the incentives he proposed. He said he expected USAC to partially fund the proposal, but did not expect as many councilmembers to criticize it in its current form.

During the meeting, USAC Alumni Representative Laureen Lazarovici and Administrative Representative Debra Geller expressed concerns with the implications of voting incentives.

Lazarovici said she thinks people should vote because they want to affect an election, not because they are receiving something in return.

Student governments do not typically give out incentives for voting at UCLA, but Student Union Director Roy Champawat said incentives have been used to reward students for voting.

ASUCLA has also participated in election incentives in the past. In 2011, the Graduate Students Association Election Board provided every 25th voter with a meal voucher valid at ASUCLA restaurants. About 5 percent of graduate students voted in the 2011 election, compared to the usual 10 to 15 percent in GSA elections.

The Election Board will attend the next USAC meeting for further discussion. USAC elections run from Monday through Friday of fifth week.