ASUO senators’ voting records will now be available online via a new Web site aimed at increasing the ease of student access to information about the ASUO.
The site, created by ASUO Sens. Jeremy Blanchard and Zachary Stark-MacMillan, tabulates major votes in Senate meetings and also includes updated versions of Senate resolutions as they are changed during meetings.
Senate Vice President Nick Schultz, who will maintain the Web site, said it would allow students to hold senators accountable for their votes during elections.
“It will make it so that ASUO elections are slightly less popularity contests,” he said, adding, “Whether it’s high school or college, student government elections are essentially popularity contests on some level. I’ve always felt it’s been sidetracked by events and T-shirts. This isn’t going to change that, but I hope it will help.”
Schultz, who finished fourth in the 2008-09 presidential election, said he was speaking from personal experience: “I’m not that popular.”
The connection between the new system and the ASUO’s elections also has echoes of the Senate’s debates earlier in winter term over resolutions opposing the Pacifica Forum, which has drawn scrutiny because its attendees have questioned the extent of the Holocaust and said things opponents have called racist and degrading to women. During one of those debates, Stark-MacMillan called upon the Forum’s opponents to vote out those who opposed one of the resolutions.
Schultz said the system would force senators to take their constituents’ interests into account when they vote, rather than merely their own, because they are concerned with the appearance they will present to potential voters.
“Our relationship is to represent,” he said. “You don’t have the privilege to just rep your own moral compass … You have to take into account the people who voted for you.”
But Sen. Tyler Griffin, the lone vote against the second Pacifica Forum resolution, said senators already voted with elections in mind.
“It is politics,” he said of the ASUO. “I think that it’s inherent in a politician to consider these things; although, it’s not within my personal paradigm.”
However, the impact of the new system on the coming election will likely be minor. The Web site, located at tinyurl.com/asuosenatedocs, currently contains only votes on two resolutions debated at the Feb. 10 Senate meeting and a copy of a forthcoming resolution about bottled water. Schultz said that he planned to eventually add previous votes to the site, but that the end of spring term was his target for that.
The impact on elections though, is a “secondary aim,” Schultz said. He said his primary intention was to make senators more accountable.
“I believe every student has the right to know how I voted, for example,” he said.
The new system will eventually be integrated into a redesigned ASUO Web site, which is expected to be up by Friday. Until then, the records will be available at the Web site Stark-MacMillan and Blanchard created.
Asuo Senate votes and resolutions are available to view as a google document at tinyurl.com/asuosenatedocs.
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