Ryan Chartrand
Click here to view video and profiles of the candidates for ASI president.
This year, Associated Students Inc. has a new electronic voting system and a new goal of 30 percent voter turnout for the elections on today and Thursday. Last year, ASI announced a goal of 25 percent and 22.5 percent of Cal Poly students made it out to the polls.
Last year’s turnout was the first jump in student participation in the past three years. Before the 2006 vote, turnout numbers fell steadily from 20.6 percent in 2003 to 15 percent in 2005.
“We decided to up our goal to 30 percent this year because last year our turnout of 22.5 percent was the highest ever; we want to raise it enough so it would be a challenge but doable,” said Mia White, ASI elections chair and nutrition senior.
The new system will be less expensive in the long run and more sustainable by helping save paper wasted on ballots. Electronic voting will also deliver election results more quickly than tallying up individual ballots, at the end of the election the system vendor will e-mail the results to ASI.
“I think that the 30 percent will make it out to the polls,” said environmental protection management senior Kris Roudebush. “I don’t think voter turnout can rise every year, but it would be good to get it at a higher percentage and keep it there.”
Despite the drop from 2003 to 2005, Cal Poly voting numbers have been above the California State University system average for student elections.
“We were told last year that the average CSU voter turnout was 8 percent,” White said. “I think it helps that we are a community school.”
ASI tested out the electronic voting system for any kinks or errors when 728 students stopped to answer questions about their political affiliation and favorite 2008 presidential candidate at the end of winter quarter.
During the test session, there was one glitch in the area allowing students to write in a candidate name that has since been fixed. ASI also worked with the system vendor to change the appearance of the actual ballot screen to add more colors and create a nicer look.
Today and Thursday, students can vote at any of the six campus locations – the University Union, Education building, Campus Market, Robert E. Kennedy Library, Cal Poly Rec Center and at the Agriculture building bridge. Each polling station will have a bank of laptop computers where students will log in to vote using their Cal Poly portal username and password.
When voting, students will be logged in under the college they are registered with. They will see all the names of the presidential candidates but only the names of the board of director’s candidates that are running within their college. After selecting their candidates’ names, students will simply hit submit to tally their vote and then log out of their portal.
“This year the presidency seems more up for grabs, so I think that will cause a higher voter turnout. Last year the race seemed more one-sided,” political science senior Leah Roady said.
ASI has created an additional Web site off of their home site detailing polling procedures for electronic voting and a map of the poll locations. The Web site also has statements posted from the ASI presidential candidates and the Board of Directors candidates divided by college.
ASI e-mailed all students a voter guide with information about the Web site on Monday.
“This year we have more candidates than we have ever had; everyone should get online and check it out,” White said.