[45] in UA Senate
Re: Detailed Election Results
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Harel M. Williams)
Tue Oct 6 16:39:24 2009
In-Reply-To: <4ACBA6F2.4040607@mit.edu>
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 13:36:53 -0700
From: "Harel M. Williams" <harel@alum.mit.edu>
To: Andrew Lukmann <lukymann@mit.edu>
Cc: UA Senate <ua-senate@mit.edu>, Sun Kim <sun_kim@mit.edu>,
Steve Kelch <phire14@gmail.com>, ua-elect@mit.edu, ua-discuss@mit.edu,
Quentin Smith <quentin@mit.edu>
I don't remember UA election results ever being withheld. Can anyone
even point to a democratic election anywhere, where election results
are withheld?
If voting numbers are going to hurt your feelings, you probably aren't
cut out for any sort of politics anyways :)
-Harel
UAP 04-05
On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 1:22 PM, Andrew Lukmann <lukymann@mit.edu> wrote:
> 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
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>
>
