Laura VilinesAs the newly elected Student Union executive officers were recently sworn into their positions, many spots in our student government still remain unfilled, while other seats in the Senate and Treasury branches were filled by write-in candidates who only received a small percentage of votes. Write-ins can hardly be considered to be true representatives of the student body, and thus should be not be allowed to be put on the ballot.
While the concept of writing-in a candidate on a ballot is a longstanding tradition that gives voters the opportunity to select whoever they feel would best represent them, it has become a means to circumvent the electoral process. Getting on the ballot at Washington University is not a particularly onerous task: you need only the signatures of 50 students on a petition. Most students could find 50 people in their residence hall or in a large lecture class to sign the petition. This process ensures that students are actively participating the electoral process, as they are directly hearing from the people who are running for office and endorsing their drive to be on the ballot.
On the other hand, some students in this past election won with only 12 write-in votes, which proved to be the cutoff this year for treasury seats, as there were more write-in candidates than seats available. This means that you could simply ask the residents of two 6-person suites to write you in as a candidate, and suddenly you’re representing a significant portion of student body. Although many of the individuals elected as write-in candidates in this past election received over 85 votes, the fact that even a few positions could be filled by people who received a mere 12 votes is troubling and should be an issue SU executives address in the coming year as the new constitution takes effect.
To combat this problem, the attorney general and the election commission need be more proactive in publicizing the elections so that students are more aware of the plethora of positions available to them. The attorney general needs to do a better job advertising the elections and the potential positions that are available so the students are more knowledgeable about the overall process. The need for write-in candidates might be eliminated if those running the elections did a better job of educating students about SU and election deadlines.
Currently, much of the publicity regarding the elections comes from the efforts of the students running for the executive positions. They are the ones out chalking the sidewalks, posting flyers, and talking to students. This is a problem because much of this publicity comes after the petitions are due; information about upcoming elections is not timely for students wishing to run, creating a need for write-ins.
While SU needs to improve the way in which elections are publicized, more should be done to recruit students to run for the positions. The new constitution, which was approved by students last fall, created a treasury branch that will handle all budgetary issues. This new branch has 17 seats, in addition to the seats in the Senate. Since there are more positions that must be filled, SU needs to step up its efforts in engaging students to run for elected office. If recruitment and retention become more of a priority, then write-in candidates will not be needed; there should be a substantial number of students interested and willing to run for all available positions and students will be able to pick their representatives from those whose names appear on the ballot from the beginning.
While the majority of the burden lies with SU, students also share some of the blame for the prevalence of write-in candidates. An overwhelming majority of students voted for the new constitution and the new positions that it created. These seats must be filled for the organization to work effectively. Students should have been aware of this when they cast their votes in favor of the constitution. It is partly students’ responsibility to make sure SU is adequately staffed.
Write-in candidacy remains a pertinent issue given that the new constitution will be going into effect with a slate of newly elected officers. The constitution is a living, growing document, and the constitutional council has the right to propose changes to the statutes at any time in the future. If SU wants to retain the mantra of being “your student government” then it needs to ensure that elections are not just about getting a few people to vote for a write-in candidate; better publicity and more rigorous recruitment will allow students to thoroughly review all the candidates. Then students can make the choice they see fit for their representative based on the people found on the ballot.