Last night, Will Sowers, chair of the Elections Reform Ad Hoc Committee, presented the final recommendations for reforming the elections process to Student Council.
After five weeks of meetings and discussion, the Reform Ad Hoc Committee comprised, of 12 student leaders and deans recommended two major structural changes to the system.
The first and primary concern was to create a University Board of Elections as a body independent of Council.
Council Executive Vice President Ronnie Mayhew sponsored a resolution that supports the ad hoc's recommendations and the founding of the UBE as a provisional organization deriving power from Council until a larger structural change could be proposed on a referendum.
"We have to stay in line with our constitution," Mayhew said. "The UBE will be far more independent after the referendum in the fall."
The referendum Council plans to put on the fall ballot will ask to approve the UBE as a special status organization that obtains power directly from President John T. Casteen and the Board of Visitors instead of Council.
Originally, the Reform Ad Hoc Committee wanted the Council resolution to recommend that the Board of Visitors approve the UBE in order to bypass the need for the referendum to change Council's constitution.
"Personally, I would rather have the UBE implemented in full immediately as a separate special status organization," Sowers said.
Mayhew's resolution was edited after concerns over the value of student self-governance and constitutional interpretation were raised by Council President Micah Schwartz and others on both the new and old Council Executive Boards.
"The idea of circumventing our constitution because it's too cumbersome supercedes the idea of self-governance on so many levels," Schwartz said.
According to Council's constitution, the bill has to sit on the floor for a week before the representative body passes judgement. Mayhew's resolution will be voted on only if Council approves the bylaw changes.
The second structural change to the elections system will be an instant run-off voting system in which voters will rank candidates. If a tie occurs, the votes for the second-tier candidates will be transferred to the first-tier candidates, thereby foregoing the need for another runoff.
"If you know your vote is going to count regardless of the outcome, you might be more likely to vote for the underdog," Sowers said.
The Reform Ad Hoc Committee declined to make conclusions regarding the role of endorsing bodies and how to reform the election rules. Sowers said he and legal counsel will research the issues over the summer and propose the necessary changes to the representative body in the fall.
The Reform Ad Hoc Committee determined, however, that "vote docking is no longer an applicable sanction for violations of elections rules and procedures."
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