Hello, students!
I can’t believe it’s already February! As midterms rear their ugly heads, I want to wish you all good luck!
As you all have probably noticed, Student Government elections are right around the corner. You will have the opportunity to vote for your Student Body president, Student Body vice president, Student Body treasurer and 50 senators Feb. 16 and 17.
SG elections receive less than a 25-percent voter turnout.
In a Student Body made up of over 50,000 students, it’s imperative we all vote. SG functions because the Student Body does, and the Student Body should always have its voice heard. As a president who has appreciated every email, concern or question from the Student Body, I also urge you to have your voice heard by voting at the polls.
In terms of voting, my administration has been working hard to look into different modes of voting. In my last article, I mentioned how I created a Remote Online Voting Task Force that is looking at how other schools in Florida and the SEC have implemented their online voting systems to help us develop an efficient system here.
The task force is made up of students from all over campus who are passionate about this issue. As a task force, we understand online voting can sometimes be worrisome or even confusing, and that is why we have been working hard to gather research on other institutions so we can implement the best model at UF.
Our research process has consisted of meeting with SG Information Technology to discuss how a potential remote system could function, and we contacted every top-50 school in North America, the SEC and the State University System of Florida.
Last Friday, the task force presented its research at the Bob Graham Center for Public Service in a presentation titled “Voting in the Digital Age.”
A couple of fun facts from our presentation: Every SEC school and the top five schools in Florida, except for UF, implement remote online voting.
Also, for every SEC school, voter participation has increased. We even gave examples of how remote online voting works at the University of South Florida, Louisiana State University and Texas A&M University.
However, we also understand there are concerns, such as fraud, glitches in the system and voter coercion.
To combat this, the task force is looking into those concerns for you and compiling different ways of prevention, so if UF implements remote online voting, we will already know how to prevent such issues.
The most exciting part is that remote online voting is on the ballot this election cycle, so if next semester you want to have the opportunity to vote from home or a computer that is not a designated polling location, then vote for the amendment.
If you want to learn about what SG is lobbying for or want to give us your suggestions, stop by UF External Affairs’ event today on the Plaza of the Americas from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Thank you for reading my column! Happy Valentine’s Day!
Ciao!
Joselin Padron-Rasines is the UF Student Body president. Her column appears monthly.
