[44] in UA Senate
Re: Detailed Election Results
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew Lukmann)
Tue Oct 6 16:22:18 2009
Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:22:10 -0400
From: Andrew Lukmann <lukymann@MIT.EDU>
To: UA Senate <ua-senate@mit.edu>
CC: Sun Kim <sun_kim@mit.edu>, Steve Kelch <phire14@gmail.com>,
ua-elect@mit.edu, ua-discuss@mit.edu, Quentin Smith <quentin@mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.1.10.0910061534000.4218@dr-wily.mit.edu>
Hey Everyone...
This is certainly not the first time this was a problem. I remember
debating with Elections Commissioners in years past when they felt
pressure from candidates not to divulge vote totals. In the end,
however, the Senate should be the arbiter of such policy, since it is so
critical to how the UA is perceived by the community. It's irresponsible
to let this matter to be left largely up to the whim of the Election
Commissioner on any given year.
As such, I strongly encourage the Senate to author and pass a bill
mandating the release of this year's information and setting clear
future policy for inclusion into the UA Election Code. I'd be happy to
work with any interested Senator in putting together language for such a
bill.
Cheers!
-Andrew L.
Quentin Smith wrote:
> On Tue, 6 Oct 2009, Sun Kim wrote:
>
>> The precedence of inconsistency and my perceived lack of benefit were
>> my personal reasons to withhold the results. I am confident that there
>> are no, to my knowledge, any inconsistencies that would cause me to
>> question the integrity of the election. If Judboard rules that it is
>> my place to release the numbers, I will do so.
>
> What is the precedent of inconsistency? As I said, I have found that
> all the results from 2000-2007 were released, and they stopped there
> only because no one seems to have maintained the ElectComm website.
> Beyond those, it looks like
>
> - Spring 2008
> - Fall 2008
> - Spring 2009
>
> were also all released, though I can only find the results in The
> Tech, and nowhere on the ElectComm site. So I can't really find much
> evidence to suggest that ElectComm has frequently not released
> results. Perhaps you misinterpreted the failure to maintain the
> Election Commision website (and the resulting broken links today) as
> an original intent to hide the results.
>
> I think there is a very clear benefit: releasing the election results
> allows voters (i.e. your constituency) to verify that their votes were
> properly counted, and provides a significant check against election
> misconduct.
>
> --Quentin
>
>>
>> Sun
>>
>> On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 2:47 PM, Steve Kelch <phire14@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I can't second the complaint, not being a student anymore, but if I
>>> could I
>>> would. What's private about an election? Are you worried someone is
>>> going to
>>> have their feelings hurt by only receiving a few votes? Tough, maybe
>>> they
>>> should have campaigned harder. This isn't a popularity contest. It's
>>> explicitly the Election Commission's job to be neutral and
>>> unfeeling. It is
>>> an egregious breech of transparency in *any* large scale election to
>>> not
>>> reveal the vote count.
>>>
>>> How else would people be able to:
>>>
>>> 1) Judge whether the vote tally approximately matches reasonable
>>> expectations
>>> 2) Ask for a recount in the event of a very close race
>>> 3) Explicitly learn to which degree certain platforms did and did not
>>> receive a popular reception, to better help those who did win the
>>> election
>>> to tailor their efforts
>>>
>>> Steve
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 2:29 PM, Quentin Smith <quentin@mit.edu> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi-
>>>>
>>>> I want to formally complain about the Election Commission's
>>>> decision to
>>>> not released the detailed election results, as has been done in
>>>> almost every
>>>> prior election. (As of the last time the Election Commission
>>>> website was
>>>> updated, which is sadly back in 2007, all the results from
>>>> 2000-2007 were
>>>> released to the public; I believe newer results are/were stored on the
>>>> vote.mit.edu server, so I can not tell if they were ever available.)
>>>>
>>>> It really hurts the UA's transparency and causes people to believe
>>>> that
>>>> the Election Commission has something to hide from the voters and
>>>> candidates. Is there any reasoning for not releasing the results? The
>>>> explanation that Sun gave to The Tech that he wanted to "preserve the
>>>> privacy of all candidates" is specious; I would expect the losing
>>>> candidates
>>>> to be among the most vocal in support of releasing results.
>>>>
>>>> --Quentin
>>>> UA CIT
>>>
>>>
>>
