Oh boy, let the misquoting begin. In light of the fact that I specifically requested a call or email regarding quotes that might be used, I only feel it right to request a correction in the Daily Cal.

1) “Both Student Action and CalSERVE were out there the same amount, yet there was a huge margin which I think may be a result of an informed student body,” said former Student Action senator Igor Tregub. “More students may have been engaged in the process then we realized.”

I never said "than we realized." It's sorta, kinda weird how this combined with my "former SA" moniker implicates the party in a bad way and totally misses my intent.

2. Tregub also suggested that some Student Action candidates may have hurt themselves by over-campaigning for their positions.

That is exactly the OPPOSITE of what I said (and I repeated it in the hope that the reporter would get it right). I said that the intensity of the campaign made no difference, but the style of the campaign did. You're supposed to work your ass off when you run for exec.

And I furthermore stated that there is a PERCEPTION of "fake-dom," not necessarily that someone came off as fake to me.

Such are the viccissitudes of life and working with the Daily Cal at times.
 

Hmm, I think Ben Narodick's interpretation (as quoted -- could be misquoted as Igor's was) of the referenda not having an effect is a bit off. The referenda could still have had an effect on the exec races even as overall voter turnout declined, by changing the relative *proportion* of voters from different parts of campus.

Last year's RSF voters may have been less likely to vote, only to be replaced by this year's TGIF and, to a lesser extent, "no fees" voters. All the fee referenda on the ballot could probably be said to motivate CalSERVE or anti-incumbent voters.

By the way, the Daily Cal made a little error yesterday when it said this is the first time CalSERVE has returned to executive offfice since 2003-2004, since Liz Hall was External Affairs VP in 2004-2005.
 

I wasn't misquoted.

People can speculate all you'd like, but there are two realities that aren't being addressed:

1) Votes are not zero-sum on this campus - not enough people are voting for this to be the case. Any success of CalSERVE is due to CalSERVE's efforts and Student Action's miscalculations, not the "miraculous outreach" of TGIF or any RSF drop-off or whatever. The only responsibility is with the candidates.

2) Speculating that RSF voters didnt vote this year, or that co-opers are overwhelmingly CalSERVE by default, etc. is simple baseless, given the complete lack of any sort of polling data. Especially when you consider that executive vote totals have averaged approximately 7000 since before online elections.

As far as I am concerned, CalSERVE won because they (most importantly) rallied their base, which had been in disarray, and appealed to the massive pool of swing students who don't care about the ASUC but do care if it is inept. They campaigned on being the rational alternative. Looking for a Nader or a referendum effect just seems to be overdetermining the result.
 

Hi Ben, I'm not sure what your first point about not being zero-sum is, and how it relates to the other points. Could you clarify a little more? I think those supporting the idea of their probably being a referendum effect, are making the point that it's not always the same universe of voters, and different voters can be motivated to vote based on what's on the ballot, so yeah, it's not zero-sum.

I agree with you that generalizations and speculation that are being tossed around are not based on any polling data or other hard numbers. However, I don't really think it takes some kind of rigourous proof to make a statement that co-opers are probably more progressive and probably more inclined to vote CalSERVE than the rest of campus. One way to see that CalSERVE has more support than Student Action in the co-ops, is by observing that a couple of successful CalSERVE candidates are from the co-ops. Daniel Montes apparently lives in a co-op (Rochdale Apts), and Rebecca Coleman is a new CalSERVE senator who was elected partially based on representing co-ops. Were any Student Action candidates elected who live in co-ops? Were there even any, never mind elected or not, who live in co-ops? (I don't know.)

Having said all this, I nonetheless still agree with you that CalSERVE also did great a job energizing its voters while appealing to the whole campus, and that this "referendum effect" was not all just fortuitously happening to CalSERVE. CalSERVE might well have won no matter what was on the ballot. Having TGIF running its campaign, probably didn't hurt though.