The alleged glitches of the UF Student Government elections last week and the subsequent behavior of SG officials make Chicago politics appear clean and tidy.
What the Editorial Board fails to understand is why SG officials have been so quick to dismiss the results of this election as anything but problematic.
Voting in District E increased by more than 800 percent this semester (535 votes) compared to last fall (65 votes).
Steven Bourdon, systems administrator of SG and the Reitz Union, said this event was nothing more than an "anomaly."
Clearly, it is much more than that.
Instead, election officials want to blame voter ignorance for the problem.
According to Friday's edition of the Alligator, "If students were placed in District E, their voting screens Tuesday morning would have indicated that. The page also listed each ZIP code not included in District E. Students who noticed zoning errors could select to complete affidavits with their correct addresses."
In other words, the burden was placed on students to ensure they actually lived in a District E ZIP code.
Fair elections should never place the burden on the voter to ensure that the information is correct.
SG Supervisor of Elections Toni Megna told the Alligator "any students that go [to the SG website to check their district] are the ones that are interested in being educated voters."
Well, that didn't sound condescending.
You cannot expect that every voter will check to make sure he or she is voting in the correct district before the election.
This situation really has nothing to do with party identification or corruption in SG. The main problem with this whole issue is nothing but pure laziness.
Any responsible governing body would admit that a mistake occurred and would do everything it could to fix the error. By blaming the voters and playing off the entire situation as an "anomaly," officials show that they do not care about the fairness and equity of the election process.
Instead of completely trying to push the situation under the rug, the Unite Party should have come out in favor of investigating these results with a louder voice than the Students Party. That would have been a responsible public relations move, shining a new light on the party commonly accused of corruption.
Instead, the Unite Party opted to try to hush the entire situation and is looking to validate the results on Tuesday. Party members just want to move on with their lives as if nothing happened.
As we said in Friday's Darts and Laurels, what harm would there be in checking the results? The Unite Party would have swept the elections either way, but at least it could have done so with a clear conscience.
