The move to modify voting procedures for the undergraduate
student government elections met an obstacle Tuesday, when the
request for a special election on the issue was denied due to
technical violations. The decision came a week after the special
election was approved.
The Undergraduate Students Association Council’s special
election would have given students the opportunity to vote on an
amendment to the election code, which would make online voting
permanent and add a clause stating that all students have the right
to vote.
Some councilmembers argued that all students are already
guaranteed the right to vote when it was first presented by General
Representative Josh Lawson last fall.
Petitions in support of an amendment, with over 2,500
signatures, were presented to council last week, and the elections
board approved a special election for a campus vote.
But after a week of review, the USAC E-board concluded Lawson
had not acted in concordance with regulations and decided not to
grant a special election.
The proposal fell short on two separate accounts: Too few
signatures were collected to merit a special election, and Lawson
failed to acquire official, written approval of the petitions, said
Roy Samaan, Elections Board Chairman.
These mistakes were the product of an “unfortunate
misunderstanding” caused by confusion over the nature of the
proposal, Lawson said.
Lawson and his office proceeded with the project as an
initiative, when they were in fact proposing a constitutional
amendment, Samaan said.
“It’s too vague … not specific enough to be an
initiative,” Samaan said, pointing out that the petitions
clearly stated the proposal was an amendment to the
constitution.
The key difference between the two types of proposals is the
number of signatures required for a special election ““ an
initiative requires the signatures of 10 percent of the student
body while a constitutional amendment requires 15 percent, leaving
Lawson over a thousand signatures short.
Lawson responded to the news with shock, saying that until the
announcement on Tuesday evening, he believed he was acting within
regulation and had received no information to the contrary.
“We did everything we thought we had to do … we had no
foreknowledge of any of this,” Lawson said.
The confusion was caused by ambiguity in the constitution which
Lawson said does not clearly state the difference between an
initiative and a constitutional amendment.
But Shiva Bhaskar, vice chairman of the E-Board and former Daily
Bruin columnist, saw it as a much more clear-cut issue.
“It isn’t really something that is subject to
interpretation … it’s pretty clear,” Bhaskar
said.
Another reason that the special election was denied is the
E-board did not receive a written proposal or officially validate
the petitions before signatures were collected, Samaan said.
But at the time Lawson began this campaign, it was not possible
to receive validation from E-board ““ it did not yet
exist.
“It’s because the board wasn’t around that
this happened,” Lawson said.
The elections board chair was not appointed until the middle of
winter quarter ““ after Lawson began collecting
signatures.
But Samaan countered by pointing out that in lieu of the
elections board, Lawson should have submitted a written notice to
USAC.
It is still possible the amendment will be put on the ballot for
the general election.
The E-board is currently deciding if the signatures can be
validated retroactively, in which case Lawson could collect the
additional signatures and put the amendment on the ballot ““
if not, all the signatures collected thus far will be void.
The second option is to bring the proposal to a vote by council
and, if passed, put the amendment on the ballot ““ an unlikely
option considering that most councilmembers have been opposed to it
in the past.