Editor’s note: This article is a guest submission from third-year Aydın Yelkovan, a candidate for the AS executive vice president for external affairs in this year’s AS election cycle. Yelkovan was disqualified after the voting period ended and has disputed the decision.

Each quarter, every undergraduate at UC San Diego pays $93.22 for the Campus Activity Fee. Cumulatively, that money comprises the $9.3 million annual budget of UCSD’s Associated Students. Next year, at least half of the A.S. Senate — the people who decide how to spend that money — won’t have had to compete in an election.

The A.S. constitution provides for 32 voting Senate seats. Of the 18 voting seats filled this past election cycle, only nine won through contested races. The remaining voting seats will be filled via Senate appointment next year, and by the time the 2026-27 Senate is filled, 23 of its voting members will be people no students had the option to vote against. 

This bloc of uncontested senators clears the two-thirds supermajority threshold the constitution requires to vote in the most consequential decisions. This means that without a single competitively-elected senator’s vote, the Senate has the power to amend the duties of the president, initiate constitutional amendments, or initiate the dismissal of any executive officer, senator, or judicial officer. Whether this bloc acts in concert is beside the point.

Worse, the very senators who ran unopposed will be the ones voting on the appointments to these empty seats. The constitution permits nonexecutive appointed senators to vote in the Senate, meaning that the students who fund all of this never get a say in who occupies up to a dozen more of the resulting seats. The people most insulated from electoral accountability are the ones who decide who gets to bypass it.

In this year’s election, only 6,351 students — 19% of the undergraduate population — voted, only a 1% decline in turnout from previous years. Despite the fact that there were no referenda on the ballot and significantly fewer candidates running for each seat, students continue to turn out at a relatively high rate. Maintained student faith and engagement warrants a serious effort from A.S. to create an institutional environment conducive to competitive elections to make our votes matter. 

While low competition is partly a product of student apathy, it is also indicative of a deeper structural failure within A.S. When ballot access requirements are not publicized ahead of the candidate filing period, qualified candidates don’t run, uncontested races depress turnout, and the winners never have to answer to their constituents. When student representatives are not accountable to anyone but themselves, faith in the institution erodes and the sheer hope of goodwill is all that remains. We are left with a $9.3 million budget governed by people we didn’t choose. 

An election that the participating student body is barely aware of will always result in these outcomes, and A.S. must address its policy failures. 

For example, the candidate filing period went almost entirely unpublicized until days before it was set to close on March 6. Though the filing period opened on Feb. 23, A.S. did not hire its election manager — who is responsible for overseeing the election’s operations — until the beginning of March.

By March 5, students raised the alarm that many candidates had not yet met the filing requirements: Candidates must gather 50, 150, or 250 signatories, depending on the seat they intend to run for. These thresholds are to ensure that candidates are willing and able to talk to at least a few of the thousands of students they are campaigning to represent. When A.S. realized that many candidates could not meet these requirements within the timeframe, election officials extended the filing period to March 13 and finally took steps to publicize the election on Instagram.

Further, the A.S. elections code requires the election manager to organize candidate workshops scheduled during the filing period. These workshops are meant to inform prospective candidates on the electoral process and what is expected of them. Workshop attendance is mandatory for ballot access and is publicized in collaboration with the chief communications and marketing officer. Initially scheduled for March 5 and March 6, the mandatory candidate meetings were canceled. They weren’t rescheduled until March 16, after the filing period had closed. 

Candidates who already met signature requirements and submitted statements were the only ones invited to attend workshops. In effect, only those with insider information or those with blind faith in the election process got ballot access. The delayed process left prospective candidates gathering signatures closer to finals, without clarity on deadlines or any guidance outside of the elections code.

College-specific senators, which comprise at least 50% of the Senate voting membership, were elected in the least competitive races. Across all 16 college-specific Senate seats, 10 were won unopposed or left vacant. 

I admire and respect those willing to step up to A.S. governance posts. Senators take on low pay for a challenging job on top of their other ambitions and responsibilities. Many of the uncontested electees are great people who I expect will represent the student body with pure intentions. However, benevolence is not a substitute for democratic accountability. A competitive election converts a representative’s concern for student needs from optional to obligatory. When half of the Senate doesn’t have to compete for public opinion, that democratic mechanism is effectively nonexistent.

A.S. is an incredible institution that could be a vehicle to empower students and fulfill student-identified needs beyond what the University deems profitable. For this to happen, we need to take back our student government. We need to ensure that no unelected member of the Senate is allowed to vote on our budget. Among other reforms, the filing period must be loudly publicized for weeks, not days. Electoral procedures must be transparent and applied in a manner consistent with the A.S. constitution’s guiding principle of accountability. 

The fatal undemocratic flaws of this election cycle are deficits of a system that leaves voting senators with little incentive to represent the public, not simply the faults of individuals in the Senate. However, as the incumbents and elected candidates remain silent regarding the overt failures of this election, I grow skeptical of their intentions. Instead of quietly benefiting from structural injustice, outgoing and incoming senators now have an opportunity to take responsibility and fix both our elections and the undemocratic composition of our Senate.

When the Senate decides where our $9.3 million go, remember that the majority of votes in the room will belong to people who never had to earn one of ours. Next election cycle, remember the candidates who show up for students and build true representation.