Editorial: Bloc voting solution brings greater threat of lower voter turnout

Reforms to the undergraduate student government elections seem to be headed in the wrong direction more than two months before they’re set to begin.

Some members of the Undergraduate Students Association Council and its Election Board discussed bloc voting, among other things, at their meeting Wednesday and tried to come up with ways to combat it.

Among the suggestions was to restrict online voting hours from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

This proposal needs to be scrapped before it can be seriously considered. And while it may possibly hinder bloc voting, it will certainly do more harm than good to the state of democracy in student politics.

According to the Election Code, bloc voting takes place when a student or group of students are coerced into voting for certain candidates. But the way bloc voting, which the Election Code explicitly bans, most often manifests itself is when a group gets together to vote for the same candidates at once, a case of groupthink rather than coercion. In particular, General Representative 3 Anais Amin voiced concerns over bloc voting occurring during fraternity and sorority meetings on Monday night.

Suman Padhi, director of the Election Board Investigations Committee, proposed the ill-conceived 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. idea as a solution, saying the board may look into it as an option.

Not only would such an irresponsible move make it difficult for students to cast their votes, it would also put a dent in USAC’s already low voter turnout. Voter turnout failed to reach 30 percent in last year’s election while a special election in October 2014 drew a paltry 13.6 percent turnout.

USAC already suffers from low engagement from its constituents. Reducing the voting window effectively by two-thirds is a surefire way to ensure that the problem, one far more worrisome than bloc voting, intensifies.

Another look at the Election Code will show that voting must open after 9 a.m. on the first day of voting and close before 5 p.m. on the last day of voting. It also states that the Election Board may change the hours the polls are open for a particular election season.

But Article VII states in certain terms that voting for spring general elections must last three full days. If the election is held online, which it is every year, voting must be open for 72 continuous hours.

Padhi’s suggestion is not only misguided, but it also doesn’t adhere to the Election Code, meaning the USAC Constitutional Review Committee must propose a change to it if the idea is to be carried out. If they take this course of action, the problem could extend beyond this year. There’s no reason it should.

Bloc voting undermines the democratic process in USAC elections. However, restricting voting times, and therefore decreasing an already low voter turnout, allows an increasingly smaller number of students to decide who handles $4 million in student fees, a far bigger threat to student democracy than bloc voting could ever be.