Sometimes when I write these columns, I wish I could type away praising Student Government competence with rainbows, unicorns and classical music in the background.
Today’s topic comes from the recent news of the first Senate Judiciary meeting in which the committee failed an online voting bill. I thought it would be responsible to clear some things up about online voting and the Constitutional Revision Commission. Additionally, I suppose this column would be a good refresher for those unfamiliar with the bumpy history of online voting here at UF.
Our story begins where some people once considered its end. After well over a decade of advocacy, a constitutional amendment passed in the 2016 SG election that would have paved the way for online voting. It just so happened that the majority party today won the executive ticket back then, too. As described in an upset student’s letter to the editor, the Student Body president manipulated the legislative branch to somehow appoint five out of seven SG Supreme Court justices.
It would be the same Supreme Court that struck down online voting, choosing to interpret the constitution in a rather unconventional way. Per our constitution, “a three-fifths approval vote of those voting in the spring general election is necessary to ratify all constitutional amendments.” The Supreme Court said the approval vote of those voting in the Spring election meant you needed to count the votes out of everyone instead of just those voting on a constitutional amendment. That meant that whenever people skipped voting on a constitutional amendment, which a lot of people do, their abstention was effectively counted as a vote against its ratification.
Of course, that’s ridiculous, but so is SG. Under this new way of counting votes for amendments, the Supreme Court tossed out a handful of old amendments, including the recently passed amendment on online voting. They also had to shoot themselves in the foot because I’m pretty sure one amendment had to do with the number of Supreme Court justices (there are five now, though on the SG website it just says “justice4” where someone’s name is supposed to be). Unfortunately, I have to say stuff like “I’m pretty sure” when talking about the case because I can’t even find the Supreme Court case on our website, which is pretty shady if you ask me.
The old letter to the editor, printed in 2016, concludes, “it seems the ruling class in SG is back to its old tricks — ignoring the voice of the Student Body and running from the nearest sight of sunshine.”
Interestingly enough, the student who wrote the letter to the editor attacking the actions of the majority party, Preston Jones, has come around to the point of now working within the majority party’s administration as their solicitor general, the administration’s lawyer. The only way this even remotely makes sense to me is when considering he has a younger sister, Meryl Jones, who serves in the Senate seat for District A within the Impact party (and by virtue of pure coincidence is already a committee chairperson). They say the real F-word is family; you got to do what you got to do for your sis.
Every constitutional amendment since that Supreme Court case has failed, which leaves online voting stuck in a rut. Naturally, there have been code revisions written in a way that tries to slide by the even older court case that says online voting is unconstitutional, but the majority party usually shuts those down as it did last Sunday in the Senate Judiciary committee.
This time, one of the fools on the committee suggested that the Constitutional Revision Commission would be the only way online voting would be brought to UF knowing full well that any amendment put up by the Commission would likely fail like all those in recent years. The Commission within our SG functions much as it does at the state level, (recall the long ballot in the November election). But because of these abstentions shenanigans, it’s probably going to be a lot more useless beyond providing superficial lines on people’s resumes.
Zachariah Chou is a UF political science junior and Murphree Area Senator. His column normally appears on Fridays.
