Online SGA Elections Spark Concerns Among Candidates

Teresa Schuster / Staff Writer

For the first time, Student Government Association elections will be held fully online, a decision some candidates believe is unwise.

The SGA’s elections code provides for an online voting component, but stipulates that “all necessary arrangements” must be made for physical voting at certain locations at each campus. After deliberation, the chief justices from the Modesto Maidique Campus and Biscayne Bay Campus Student Government Councils interpreted that this meant elections weren’t necessarily required to be done on campus at all.

“The elections code wasn’t written for cases such as this one,” said Tatiana Arevalo, elections commissioner for SGC-MMC, in an email to PantherNOW. “We are working to try and provide elections to students despite the circumstances.”

But some candidates disagreed, arguing that elections shouldn’t happen at all this semester.

“Why is it that the SGA actually passed [the motion to continue with] elections?,” Jose Portes Cevallos, a candidate for senate, asked during public comments at Monday’s senate meeting. “It’s not going to be the greatest, for pretty obvious reasons.”

Portes said because he’s not affiliated with a political party, he doesn’t have an online platform to sufficiently promote his campaign, and the decision to hold elections this semester puts him at a disadvantage.

While senators pointed out the difficulties with leaving SGA positions vacant in the summer, Portes reiterated his concerns.

“It’s going to be a difficult race for constituents to pay attention [to],” he said at the meeting, later taking to social media to share his opinion.

“[These] elections shouldn’t be taking place,” he wrote in an Instagram post.

Elections were originally scheduled to be held in mid-March, but after FIU told students to leave campus due to the coronavirus pandemic, the SGA decided to postpone them. The elections board announced the decision via Instagram, just one day before elections were scheduled to begin.

“We are working to ensure that candidates’ hard work and efforts are displayed through elections,” Arevalo said.

Others were more supportive of the SGA’s decision to hold elections later this semester.

“I don’t think elections could have been extended much longer. [We] are sad that we can’t reach the student body on a more personal level – face to face – as we had wished, but there is nothing we can do and safety and health will always come first,” said Alexandra Valdes, presidential candidate for The Future is You party, in an email to PantherNOW.

Presidential candidate and Roar! party leader Rose Ingraham also said she thought the decision was the best solution, but raised concerns about students’ familiarity with the issues and candidates they’d be voting for, and their knowledge about the election itself.

All campaigning was suspended until this Monday, when the new election dates, April 7th and 8th, were announced. It is now fully online, and it and the majority of the SGA and elections board’s elections outreach is through social media.

“A lot of students don’t necessarily have social media,” said Ingraham. “Or they’re not already following the elections or SGA pages.”

College of Arts, Sciences & Education Senator Bryan Gomez said that although the sudden transition to online campaigning has disadvantages and he sympathized with Portes, it could have some advantages as well.

“We have to adapt to the circumstances that are thrown at us,” Gomez said. “I would think that more people might be able to vote because of the fact that it’s happening online.”

Elections turnout has been consistently low in previous years, even with partially online voting. According to Gomez, last year around 2,000 votes were cast in elections, representing less than 4% of FIU’s student body.

Arevalo said she wasn’t sure how the shift to online voting would impact turnout, but that the elections board was doing everything they could to encourage students to vote.

Concerns have also been raised about potential technology issues during the election. There has never been a fully online election, and the software used in past elections has been problematic.

Last year, the ballot software malfunctioned when only some of the voting was done online. Students were not able to vote for all of the open seats, leading to a runoff election a week later.

Campus Life is using new software this year in an attempt to prevent similar mishaps. But it has already caused issues, despite being tested at homecoming. The software initially prevented senate candidates from registering to run for the correct positions, which led to elections code violations and a delay in elections information being released.

At a senate meeting in March, Arevalo and SGC-MMC’s advisor Michelle Castro reassured concerned senators that all of the system’s problems would be fixed before the election.

“We are working closely with the Information Technology department along with advisors to ensure that system failure does not occur,” Arevalo later said in an email to PantherNOW.

Arevalo also said that the ballot would be tested again prior to elections.

SGA elections will be held online on April 7 and 8, between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. each day. Read PantherNOW’s guide to this year’s elections, ballot, and candidates here.

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