Despite a landmark A.S. Council decision earlier this year to implement
a system that enables voters to rank candidates in order of preference,
unopposed races for all four A.S. executive positions this spring will
leave student voters with fewer options at the polls than ever before.
Instant runoff voting had already been a popular initiative
for four years before approval from TritonLink officials allowed the council to
enact it last December. However, A.S. President Marco Murillo said that because
the system only applies to races with three or more candidates, and this year
the top four positions — president and vice presidents of student life, finance
and resources and external affairs — each have only one, gauging IRV’s impact
on the election will be complicated.
“It’s unfortunate that we’re not going to be able to test
out the new system we just put into place,” Murillo said.
He said that convincing people to vote at all in this
election will present a challenge.
“As a councilperson, you want to make sure people are
informed and know what’s going on, but at the same time, with only one person
running, it is difficult,” Murillo said.
A.S. Vice President of Student Life Donna Bean, this year’s
only candidate for A.S. president, said she agrees that the lack of competition
will undermine the voting system’s democratic purpose.
“I don’t like the idea of basically having it handed to
you,” she said. “A democratic structure only works if there are multiple people
running.”
A.S. Elections Manager Tanya Piyaratanaphipat said she
believed that the new voting system would encourage greater candidate
participation. She also said that that she was disappointed with the results
last week, when all candidacy declaration forms were due.
There will be only one race, at
effect. All officer positions are uncontested, and none of the all-campus
positions has more than two candidates running.
“Having competitive races is great for all elections,”
Piyaratanaphipat said. “It breeds innovation and encourages candidates to work
toward their goals. I really wish that had happened.”
In addition to the small number of candidates overall, only
three individuals announced candidacy outside the Student Voice! slate, a
figure that Piyaratanaphipat said will affect the general dynamic of the
election.
“We were really hoping that come
not because we wanted Student Voice! to lose, but because we wanted to see
competition,” she said. “[Without an opposition slate], the race is going to be
different this year.”
Thurgood Marshall College Senator Kyle Samia, who has served
on the council since 2005, said the low number of candidates — especially those
not identifying with SV! — was unsurprising. He cited slate politics as a chief
cause of this year’s election makeup.
“If a slate dominates, it keeps all of the powerful
positions within a small community,” he said. “How are you going to debate
someone on a referendum if you’ve never seen it? The crux of the issue is that
Student Voice! has mastered the language.”
Samia said he is pleased with this year’s candidate pool,
but he emphasized a more long-term challenge that the slate-dominated system
presents: incorporating a wider set of voices.
“Everyone is fighting the fact that the majority of UCSD
doesn’t care, and that makes the slates capable of dominating,” he said. “It
takes a lot of knowledge and persistence to be on A.S. The students who are
willing to do that are exemplary. In my experience with the candidates, I
personally think they are going to do fabulous, but the criticism is that maybe
A.S. really does keep this experience locked up.”
Bean said she does not plan to use the dearth of opponents
as an excuse to decrease her campaign’s magnitude. She said she views her
unique situation as an opportunity to build a strong mandate heading into her
presidency. She is moving to gather input from student organizations and the
public and to begin working toward her presidential goals immediately.
“As much as we’re all disappointed, we can always turn it into
something positive,” Bean said. “We can reach out and gauge student opinion and
see what issues are important to them.”
She added that a lack of competition does not mean an easy
campaign.
“It’s going to make the job harder, because I think people
will be far more critical,” she said. “It’s a time for people to prove
themselves.”
