Suspect Special Elections
The ASUO Executive confirmed its 4th Elections board member last Wednesday. The Constitution actually states that board members have to be confirmed before November 1st, but the Exec blamed previous administrations for taking out that 4th board member and not following the rules. The current Exec’s excuse for not knowing about the required 4th board member in the rules was unclear (as in, why didn’t they read the rules before?)…but it basically gave them an opportunity to plug a 4th person into the election board at their discretion…curious. The timing of all of this is very curious.
Hopefully Andrew Jensen, the new Outreach Coordinator, will focus outside of the Greek and Housing areas and actually outreach to the large majority of students that don’t vote and aren’t normally involved in ASUO.
Additionally, the timing of the Special Election is very suspect. The Special Election is basically changing PFC and ADFC to PFC, ACFC (Athletics and Contracts Finance), and DFC (Departments Finance) thus hopefully taking off the burden on PFC. The net change is that it adds an extra finance seat to the Senate body, and then adds an extra academic seat as well to keep the ratio of academic and finance 1:1.
Since this Special Election is directly related to the Spring term elections and the ASUO Senate, potential candidates for ASUO Senate CANNOT file their petitions to run until the Con Court approves of both the actual election and the new election packet. According to Kendell Tylee, the Elections Coordinator (Emily and San’s former campaign manager) the soonest that candidates can validly file to run is March 3rd. That date is contingent on Con Court approving as fast as possible. The mandatory candidates meeting is March 7th.
In simple terms, that leaves 4 days for students to file to run for ASUO positions. FOUR days. Sure, it’s been done before at other elections, but think of the impact of this: Unless someone was an ASUO insider, friends with someone in ASUO, or sat in on the last meeting, how could they know that their petitions wouldn’t be valid if filed before March 3rd? With the ASUO being as confusing as it is, this will only add to the difficulty of trying to get involved. The four day window will reduce the pool of students willing or able to apply for ASUO positions and makes it so much easier for current ASUO chumps to fill them with their own pawns.
If the Special Election is going to affect Spring term elections so much, why not wait until after the Spring term elections? Or why not make the effects of the Special Election take place next year, not this year?
As of today, Election Coordinator Kendell Tylee confirms that the Con Court still has NOT approved of the Special Election…which I’m guessing means that the approval of the Elections packet will be later…which means that petitions will be pushed back…
1 dollar says we have an all Exec-appointed Senate this year, courtesy of Fight Club.
asuo is neat
At long last, I can actually agree with ted on something…
I’m pretty sure Jen Lleras ran the Emily/San campaign… Tylee was more of a cheerleader. Still out there every day in an Emily/San tee-shirt, probably campaigned more for the exec ticket than for herself. Her appointment to Elections Coordinator was probably the most bullshit move McLain has made all year.
These amendments do nothing to tackle the completely arbitrary nature of the PFC allocation process. Sure consolidating contract negotiations into a new committee is fine and dandy, but where is the discussion about PFC itself?
The elections coordinator, on the other hand, was probably not an arbitrary move on McLain’s part. Nifty way to influence election grievances and deadlines. Tylee even appears to take political stances by writing into the ODE, violating her obligation to be apolitical during election season. I don’t see why any “outsider” bothers to run this election season.