Members of ASUNM amended the student government’s election code Wednesday in an attempt to increase voter turnout in upcoming elections.
In a 16-2 vote, the Associated Students of UNM passed an amendment to the election code. The amendment increases candidate campaign budgets by $50, allows students who are unable to make it to the polls to vote by other means, requires polling places to be marked with at least one sign, and makes voting hours on north campus later in the evening.
“Hopefully we have taken some steps to maybe make things more visible on election day with the process changes we have made with this bill,” ASUNM senator Chris Wright said.
Last spring 1,433 of the University’s nearly 19,000 undergraduate students voted in the ASUNM elections – less than 10 percent.
Senator Abdullah Feroze said increasing voter turnout will help the senate understand the undergraduate student body’s needs.
“If we could get a large number of people to show up to the polls, that would benefit the senate and the whole undergraduate population at large,” Feroze said.
Until now, students who can’t get to the polls on election days – including athletes, foreign exchange students and student interns who are away from campus – couldn’t vote in ASUNM elections. The new election code will give these students a vote if they make a request with the ASUNM Election Commission 12 days in advance. Students will get a secure IP address where they can cast their votes.
Wright said he isn’t sure these changes will substantially boost voting numbers.
“These are things we don’t know yet,” Wright said. “And one of the important things about the fall election versus the spring election is that they don’t have as many positions open to run. So the fall election can be used to implement new procedures and see how they work.”
Half of the senators run in the fall, while the other half campaign along with ASUNM presidential and vice presidential candidates in the spring.
In past elections, candidates for senator, vice president and president were allowed to use $150, $250 and $300 respectively to campaign. That number will increase by $50 each.
Some ASUNM members attempted to pass similar legislation in March, proposing to add $100 to each office’s campaign budget. Eleven senators opposed the bill then.
Feroze said more campaign spending will help overall participation, since all of the candidates are receiving the same amount of extra funding.
“The biggest disappointment after every election is how poorly students turn out to the polls. It is usually 3 to 5 percent,” Feroze said. “I hoped that by increasing each of those by $50, we could hopefully increase the amount of student awareness about the election.”
The senators also changed the polling time on north campus from 1-5 p.m. to 3-7 p.m. to accommodate students taking all-day labs.
The code now also requires that ASUNM mark at least one entrance on all polling places.
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The only amendment that failed was an attempt to reform the contested election code.
Contested elections — where candidates make official complaints about their opponents breaking campaign rules — have happened several times in years past. In December of 2008, the eight-member Voice Slate was punished for breaking campaign rules.
The senators were said to be within 25 feet of polling locations and “dorm storming” — campaigning in the dorms on Election Day. These actions are prohibited by the elections commission code.
The students were fined, and a few senators had their voting privileges stripped for four weeks.
“For at least the past three semesters, there have been contests of the election,” Feroze said. “The actual contestation clause varies from semester to semester. I was hoping to see some standards from semester to semester.”
Feroze said contested election reform could clean up the campaign process.
“Having a streamlined, efficient Elections Commission that is able to hand out appropriate punishments will deter candidates from trying to violate the elections code,” he said. “I know people in the past have complained that the election code didn’t have teeth, and there have been candidates who have attempted to flirt with the laws.”
Wright said he voted against the amendment because he and a few fellow senators are working on a bill of their own that addresses the problem.
“Certainly the contest of election does discredit the election itself, and that is a serious issue,” he said. “Making sure we have a contest of election code that works and that is fair, I think, is more important than rushing to a change.”
Wednesday was the deadline for amending the election code this fall. ASUNM cannot vote on other proposed amendments to the code, including contested election reform, until spring.
