Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Teh Reform!
First up for elections changes: Van Nguyen of CalSERVE wants ballot tabulation to take place two days after the election, regardless of Judicial Council cases. The cases would still take place and affect the results, but the uncertified results will be released almost immediately. I don't have the text of the bill. I might ask Van for it if I feel like it.
Pro: The big issue is that after the elections momentum and everyone's vote, post-election cases can make tabulation drag on long into the future, and even into the summer. This means that for many students, they vote, and then hear nothing about results until they come back from summer break, where everyone's already in office. The point here would be that if results are released immediately, people will be more interested and maybe Student Action wouldn't think it could pull off executive orders declaring itself victor.
Con: There are two serious issues:
1) Once someone thinks they've won, they'll move into the office and start pretending to be winners, even though the results haven't been certified yet. It'll make it that much harder (from the current "impossible") to disqualify leading candidates. I think the bylaw change should make clear that there are no winners until certification, and that the leaders cannot exercise executive authority until then. Not that a rule would stop them, but...
2) If a disqualification occurs, a retabulation is needed. I believe the League of Women Voters has a problem with this. Thus, it would be advisable to have a provision that defines "counting," which the LoWV needs to oversee, merely as the process of seeing what the votes are, rather than the whole tabulation process.
I hope they take some action to handle this, but I'm sure they won't.
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