Wednesday, April 3, 1996
Council sidesteps proposal to hold voting in one areaBy Brooke
Olson
Daily Bruin Staff
With spring elections quickly approaching, the undergraduate
government is busy fine-tuning the details of this year’s campaign
season.
On Tuesday night, the council was successful in retaining
polling booths for its campus-wide election on March 1 and 2.
University administrators originally insisted that the voting be
held in one location  Ackerman Grand Ballroom.
The university informed the council last quarter that the
elections would need to be held in the ballroom because the voting
would be done electronically, as opposed to the typical scantron
ballots.
Students have voted with scantron forms for more than 20 years
but the administration recently sold the machine which counted the
ballots.
"The scantron machines were old and worn out," said Perry
Jaster, the associate developmental engineer for the psychology
department, which tabulated the ballots annually.
"They were extremely unreliable and caused numerous problems in
last year’s elections because they kept miscounting the votes," he
added.
The new scantron machines purchased by the psychology department
are unable to tally votes.
Undergraduate President York Chang pressured the Center for
Student Programming and the student government’s Election Board to
find another suitable machine to handle scantrons.
"The council felt that having only one polling station in
Ackerman would severely hurt voter turnout," Chang said.
Last year, only 4,592 undergraduates  about 22 percent
 voted in the general council election.
But late Monday night, the Election Board found another machine
on campus that could count votes.
"(The board) was extremely relieved that we could retain
scantron voting," said Robert Rhoan, the Election Board chair. "Now
we will be able to have polling booths throughout the campus."
The council approved the placing of 11 different polling
stations throughout north and south campus, including Royce Quad,
Bunche Hall and the Court of Sciences. Although the areas target
the most populated areas on campus, Chang said he would like to see
more polling booths set up on campus.
"Obviously, the more areas that are covered, the larger the
voter turnout will be and that’s what is really important," he
said.
Chang added that he would like to see another polling station
near the dorm area. Currently, only one polling station exists at
Griffin Commons.
The Election Board said a cost analysis would be needed to
determine whether or not additional polling booths could be added.
However, the board argued that the dorms did not need any more
polling stations.
"Typically, Griffin Commons has one of the lowest voter turnouts
during the election," said Angela Foster, the Election Board
vice-chair."Turnout is pretty low because most dorm residents vote
down on Bruin Walk."
Foster added that when she lived in the dorms, she remembered to
vote only after she got on campus because of all the election
campaigning present on Bruin Walk.
"(The board) is confident that we’ve placed the booths in areas
which are easily accessible to all students," Rhoan said.
Overall, the council was satisfied that Ackerman Grand Ballroom
would not become the sole polling stations.
"I’d like to see polling done electronically because I think the
votes could be more accurate," Chang said. "But I think it’s
important for the administration to hold off until they have the
ability to provide electronic polling booths in a variety of areas
around campus."
The polling booths will be manned once again by Conning Towers,
which is part of the ROTC. They will be paid $4,500 for the job,
Election Board members said.