In campus politics, securing student interest is hard enough. The job becomes even harder when your own elections committee effectively encourages voters to stay at home on Election Day.

For years, the A.S. Council has complained about student apathy, trying to figure out why so few students care about their representatives. For the councilmembers in attendance at this week’s election debate, the answer should have been obvious — since they were largely the only ones in the audience.

It was probably a good thing too, since no people attending the debate would have learned much of anything to help them make up their minds.

We must concede, running an election is a tough job. But that’s no excuse for holding a debate — the only time students can question candidates — that serves simply as a platform for candidates to recite their memorized statements to the three A.S. junkies in the audience; the questions asked by the committee certainly didn’t require them to go much beyond that, or invite regular students to participate.

Is asking candidates how they would better run A.S. Council meetings important? Certainly, but to most students, it’s less important than finding out what vision the candidates have for the Sun God festival or their stance on funding for A.S. Safe Rides.

Had this paper been asked to participate, this board would have been happy to moderate the debate and ask the same sort of relevant, tough questions we have put before the candidates in our private interviews this week. Alas, our phones did not ring.

The elections committee, it seems, has yet to realize that getting students to vote requires more than putting a mermaid or two on the sample ballot.