By Jonathan Hiser
ASUP tested the waters for future electronic voting with the online voting for Capital Improvements Fund on Tuesday and Wednesday.
As of midday on Wednesday, 15 percent of the student body had voted. The renovation of the brick seating area outside of the Pilot House, one proposed Capital Improvement, won the most support from voters.
"Online voting is an idea that other executive boards had, but we actually decided to take it on," said ASUP Vice President Anna Costa. "We decided that it was one of the major things we had to do."
The voting comes on the heels of a low turnout at ASUP elections. Last year's executive election garnered 26 percent of the student body, the lowest turnout in five years.
According to Costa, about 21 percent of students cast ballets in the September Senate election.
Costa said that online voting should curb the low turnout trend by bringing the voting booth to the student.
"We think people didn't vote because they didn't know about it or they didn't see it," Costa said. "But if it's on their UP Portal, that can't be an excuse anymore."
ASUP President David Gregg said he wants the online voting to produce a marked increase in student participation.
"Seeing that it's just been launched, I'm hoping for 25 to 35 percent," Gregg said. "We'd like 50 percent for Executive Board elections."
At present, online voting for the Capital Improvements Fund is for only this year. ASUP will reserve future online elections for Senate elections and Executive Board elections.
"We didn't want to use one of those big elections to test it for the first time, just in case it caused controversy," Costa said. "It's more of a test run."
The voting results are not binding, as the final choice on which capital improvement is picked lies in the control of ASUP, not the student body.
"We're still reaching out for student opinion, and we definitely want feedback," Costa said. "We are talking about getting feedback directly from the election site."
The job of deciding which Capital Improvements project to fund traditionally falls to the ASUP Senate. In theory, senators speak with their constituents, debate ideas in the Senate, and submit a final list to the Executive Board.
"Senators are supposed to be reaching out to their constituents, but this voting was just an easier way for them to do it," Costa said.
This year, the final list was put online for students to see and vote on before ASUP makes a final call. Costa said the online ballet results will be taken into consideration.
Although a student's individual voting can be monitored, Costa said ASUP will not look at it, instead looking only at residence hall demographics and overall turnout per class.
"We get that information anyways from paper ballets," Costa said.
Ideally, come executive elections in February, paper ballets will be phased out entirely, according to Costa.
As in the Capital Improvements Fund voting, students will be allowed to vote only once. The security feature requiring the student's login information and the last four digits of her social security number will still be in place. For some international students without social security numbers, temporary numbers will be assigned.
Costa said advertising for the Capital Improvements Fund was kept low.
"We decided not to have this one be very flashy," Costa said. "With the executive elections, we want it to be more prominent."
