Oh, noes, a Daily Cal opinion!

Well. You probably know how I feel about Daily Cal editorials in general.

That Student Action can gain two more senate seats by dropping one senator may seem illogical.

Well, yeah. It's also not true. I'm pretty sure the idea is that they'll drop one losing Senate candidate to get one more Senate seat.

CalSERVE dropped four candidates before tabulation this year, and ran candidates who had no intention of becoming senators clearly for the purpose of amassing more party votes. Moreover, this issue could and should have been addressed by the ASUC Senate, of which Mairena has been a member for the past year. Claims of ethical superiority do not hold water if you utilize a system when it's politically expedient, yet cry foul when it fails to work in your favor.

I feel like I've heard that before somewhere.

Dropping candidates in this manner disregards voters who may have elected Shirazi (or any other candidate) on the basis of his ideas or qualifying attributes, rather than the fact that he ran with Student Action.

You see, before the drop, Shirazi didn't win, and his votes were redistributed. But now that he's being dropped, he won't win, and his votes will be redistributed. This disregards voters who voted for him to a greater extent for some reason.

Could it be that The Daily Cal just didn't know that Shirazi wasn't one of the winners? It would explain both statements.

In pursuit of that aim, the incoming senate should take up the issue of altering the drop system to prevent common abuses like the ones we're now witnessing. Since the system must remain in some form, the public tabulation of the election results should be set as the deadline for candidates to drop.

First of all, there's no reason the drop system needs to remain in some form. Second, setting the deadline as tabulation is a horrible idea that invites actual corruption.

posted by Beetle Aurora Drake 4/24/2009 03:57:00 AM #
Comments (9)

. . .

Comments:

it's a "horrible idea" especially when the elections council is corrupt and releases election results before tabulation

# posted by  Anonymous : 7:19 AM, April 24, 2009

 

yea, beetle. how'd you get the results leaked to you for your "Drip, Drip, Drip" piece, eh?

I smell corruption on multiple levels, and you are complicit.

# posted by  Anonymous : 8:26 AM, April 24, 2009

 

I'm glad you finally understand the concern. So you can make this conversation about me, or you can make it on how to protect the voting system. The fact that you don't know means the voting accountability system is broken. A corrupt Elections Council/IST/Poll Staff/anyone else running the election should not be sufficient to subvert the elections process, but right now it is. If you don't have infinite trust in such people (and you shouldn't), then you shouldn't even be considering making enforced ignorance part of the voting system.

# posted by  Beetle Aurora Drake : 10:13 AM, April 24, 2009

 

LOL okay...the only "member" of the Elections Council who had the voting information was the Tech Coordinator, and I use quotes for that because he's not even technically a member. I can't speak for the other members of the Council, but I didn't even see the results of the election until tabulation took place. Please don't vacuously call the whole Council "corrupt" when you don't even know how the information got out.

That being said, I agree with you Beetle. There's really no point in not disclosing the information as soon as we get it. I wasn't ECC this year so it's not like I had much clout, but if I'm on the Council next year I'll work to change it.

# posted by  Vinit : 7:01 PM, April 24, 2009

 

I didn't mean to suggest that this Elections Council was corrupt. I was pointing out that no voting system should work from the assumption that the people running it are not corrupt.

# posted by  Beetle Aurora Drake : 7:05 PM, April 24, 2009

 

Oh, I apologize Beetle; I was referring to the first two comments.

I categorically agree with you on this one. We shouldn't be functioning under a system where students are forced to put blind trust in three or four students running an election.

# posted by  Vinit : 7:15 PM, April 24, 2009

 

"CalSERVE dropped four candidates before tabulation this year, and ran candidates who had no intention of becoming senators clearly for the purpose of amassing more party votes."

It's bad understanding of single transferable vote to assume that a party can win more seats by fielding fake candidates.

Single transferable vote, as the name implies, means that I have only ONE vote, which gets transferred. It doesn't matter if I have 20 Cal SERVE candidates on my ballot or 16. My vote can only elect one of them.

# posted by  Anonymous : 3:30 PM, April 25, 2009

 

You're right that it won't affect CalSERVE party voters, but they aren't the target of the tactic. The idea is that individuals bring in votes, too, and the people who vote for those individuals say "while I'm voting, I may as well vote for the rest of the party."

# posted by  Beetle Aurora Drake : 4:21 PM, April 25, 2009

 

I get the point. It's like putting a party ad "your vice-president endorses (blabla)" on the ballot.

However it could technically backfire by diluting the number of "first votes" within the party.

# posted by  Anonymous : 5:04 PM, April 25, 2009

 

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