OPINIONS
When FAU e-mailed me last month reminding me to “exercise” my right to vote, they weren’t kidding.
During the Feb. 23 and 24 SG elections, almost all students who voted did so online at their convenience. But I had to drive to campus on my day off to fill out a paper ballot.
I tried to vote online. I wanted to vote for only president and Boca governor, though. I wanted to be responsible and not vote for the House of Representatives because I’d never even heard of the candidates. But this semester, the online voting system forced students to vote for both governor and the House — or else not vote for either office.
So, after I selected a governor, the online ballot gave me an error message: It would not allow me to submit my governor vote without first selecting a House of Representatives candidate (see screenshot).
It turns out this ballot error was due to a preventable oversight by SG Director Heather Bishara and/or Chair of Elections Freddy Moldt.
Bishara told me that she and Moldt set up the online ballot together. Moldt, however, initially denied this.
“I didn’t have any control of the e-ballot system,” he claimed before changing his answer.
“I don’t have too much involvement with the system,” he then said, adding that he has only ever been able to access the voting system from Bishara’s office.
Either way, this is the second ballot problem this school year.
Last semester’s elections had to be held twice because, the first time around, the registrar’s office submitted an outdated list of eligible voters. As a result, some students were unable to vote, while other students could vote twice. Even some alumni could vote.
When I spoke to her, Bishara said that she and Moldt “were so conscious of making sure that the ballot works right” this semester that they forgot to set up the online ballot so that voters could opt out of voting for certain offices.
Then she tried to make me feel better about it.
“I don’t want to tell you to vote for someone if you don’t want to, because that’s not right.” But, she added, “With the Boca House, everyone who’s on that list [of eight candidates] is getting into the House because there’s 13 [open] seats.”
But learning that my House of Representatives vote would have meant nothing just pissed me off further. So, I decided to look into this semester’s elections mistake.
I discovered that Student Body President Tiffany Weimar had broken a critical elections statute and that the Elections Board barely advertised the elections despite receiving extra funds to do so.
I wasn’t alone in my anger, either.
Megan Trombino, a grad student and teaching assistant in the School of Communication, experienced the same problem when she attempted to vote for just governor. Unaware of the paper ballot option, she resorted to Facebook.
“I ended up going on Facebook and typing each one of the candidates’ names into the search bar because I had never heard of any of these people,” she said of the House of Representatives.
“If no one knows what their first or last name is, has never heard of them before, has no idea what they want to do in Student Government, why should you have to be forced to vote?” Megan asked. “At the end of the day, your vote doesn’t mean anything: All these people are getting an opportunity anyway.”
Jared Stark, a former chair of elections who graduated in May, sympathized with our frustration and explained the cause.
“That is really odd that it makes you vote for a representative. When I was there, that wasn’t the case,” he said. “The problem is that, unfortunately, they don’t do enough advertising for Student Government and drum up enough support. It really should be a wider field so that it’s a competitive election and we get people in who really want to serve.”
Two months after Stark graduated, the SG Senate unanimously approved a bill that doubled the funding for the 2009-2010 elections. Emphatically titled “Market Student Government Elections!” the bill allocated an additional $500 for “needed marketing investments, such as banners and other promotional items.”
“Marketing for Elections [sic] is essential in fostering student participation in elections,” explained the bill — written by Student Body President Tiffany Weimar and VP Collene O’Reilly.
But according to a senator who sponsored the bill, the Elections Board failed to take advantage of it.
“The only thing I saw advertised were one or two MyFAU blasts and … little flyers hanging up in the Breezeway,” said Senator Ayden Maher. “I know there were banners, but I believe all those banners were from years past.”
Maher, who is currently running for student body president, added that squandered money is common throughout SG.
“That’s what happens in SG all the time: People are allocated budgets, and what happens is we don’t even spend the students’ money on things they deserve,” he said. “It’s not just Tiffany, and it’s not just Freddy. It’s the House, it’s the Senate, it’s all across the board.”
O’Reilly, who is the head of the Senate and also running for student body president, disagreed.
She claimed that “most” of the extra $500 was spent on “really big” elections posters for every campus. The remaining money, she said, was spent on food for candidate meet-and-greets, which preceded the poorly attended debates.
O’Reilly, a resident on the Boca campus, suggested that Maher may not have noticed all the advertising because he’s a commuter student.
The problem with that explanation, though, is that FAU’s own statistics state that 91 percent of its students are commuters. So, if this year’s elections advertising efforts failed to reach commuters, the Elections Board scored a big, fat “F” in marketing. That’s especially pathetic, considering that the chair of elections has a degree in marketing.
Moldt did mention that he used FAU’s official Facebook and Twitter accounts to spread the word about the elections. This was the defense he offered when I finally got ahold of him — 17 days after I started trying to contact him.
The problem with these advertising strategies is that they are, well, a lie. I checked FAU’s official Facebook and Twitter accounts. I found no mention of SG elections in 2010.
Although poor advertising contributed to this school year’s shameful voter turnouts (see below), it’s not the root of the problem. This year’s elections blunders started when Weimar broke SG statute 304.210.
According to the statute, the student body president must appoint a chair of elections “within thirty (30) business days after [sic]” his or her inauguration
Weimar was inaugurated on May 4. According to paperwork I had to obtain from FAU officials, her chair of elections, Freddy Moldt, started his job on Aug. 27 — 81 business days later.
Weimar claimed that she had to go through “two or three” rounds of interviews in order to find a suitable chair of elections. Each time she interviewed multiple candidates, she said, but did not want to be quoted on the number of candidates.
O’Reilly confirmed with equally vague terms that “it was a lot” of interviews.
I requested paperwork from FAU officials to confirm their accounts, but they were unable to respond before press time.
Still, I find an excess of applicants a weak defense for violating a critical statute by 51 days. After all, Weimar’s violation directly resulted in Moldt having to start his job just 12 business days before the disastrous fall elections. Every other elections screw-up that happened this school year could be traced back to this violation too.
Even worse, however, is that SG never enforced the statute.
I discussed it with Boris Bastidas, an active House of Representatives member who has fought for elections reform.
“There has to be some kind of teeth on that,” he said of statute 304.210. “What we have to add in there is what happens if that rule gets broken, you know?”
I do know. I’m just not sure the rest of SG does.
I asked SG Director Heather Bishara whether the SG statutes outline consequences for students who break them. She pointed me to the wishy-washy administrative chapter of the statutes, which mentions only loophole-ridden enforcement.
As Bishara summed it up, “The statutes define ways that suspension and impeachment can occur, but students have to assess the need for such acts and determine the necessity.”
According to the executive chapter of the statutes, however, the executive branch — headed by the student body president and VP — is “responsible for the enforcement” of statutes. So, the person who violated elections statute 304.210 is the same person in charge of enforcing it.
No wonder SG hasn’t done anything about its elections mess.
[Brandon Ballenger contributed to the reporting in this article.]
What marketing?
Drastic drops in voter turnouts suggest the Elections Board didn’t do their job this year
Some SG officials claim that this year’s elections advertising was weak at best. Others claim that extra advertising funds were well spent. But numbers don’t lie — and this year’s voter turnouts tell a pathetic story:
2009-2010 VOTER TURNOUTS:
Fall semester (enrollment of 27,700):
– Students who voted on campus ballots: 758 (2.7% of all students)
Spring semester (enrollment of 26,453):
– Students who voted on campus ballots: 1,132 (4.3% of all students)
– Students who voted on the university-wide ballot: 1,429 (5.4% of all students)
2008-2009 VOTER TURNOUTS:
Fall semester (enrollment of 27,021):
– Students who voted on campus ballots: 1,322 (4.9% of all students)
Spring semester (enrollment of 25,292):
– Students who voted on campus ballots: 2,175 (8.6% of all students)
– Students who voted on the university-wide ballot: 2,276 (9.0 % of all students)
[Sources: Student Government; FAU’s Office of Institutional Effectiveness & Analysis]
