The ASCC Court agenda had two items of old business to discus; the first item being the student government notation.
This item was going to be presented by Associate Justice Eddie La Rosa and Diana Arana, however due to La Rosas’ absence the item was postponed until the next court meeting.
The second item of old business was online voting. This was presented by Chief Justice Alejandra Lopez.
With Lopez making a presentation, it was necessary to have Associate Justice Pro-Tempore Gabriela Gutierrez preside over the meeting.
Lopez proposes to implement online voting in the upcoming presidential and trustee ASCC elections.
The voting system would come from the company Simply Voting.
In the presentation Lopez states that this is the voting system that is used in other campuses like Rio Hondo, California State University San Marcus and University of California Davis among others.
Using Simply Voting’s election manager website, the ASCC Court would create the election. They would impute times and dates of election and names of candidates.
Cerritos students would then receive an e-mail telling them what website to go to and how to log in to cast their vote.
Of course this service is not free; the cost for a single election like the upcoming ASCC elections would be $3,730 and with 27,000 eligible voters, a year’s subscription would be $6,000 also depending on how many eligible voters there are.
Despite the cost there are several pros to having online voting.
The first is this method is more environmentally friendly; there would be considerably less paper used per election.
Second, faster processing of votes; the Simply Vote system tallies the results as soon as the voting window closes.
Third, an increase in election voters; according to Lopez presentation Simply Vote reports an increase of 60 percent of voters with the use of their system and currently less than 1,000 students vote.
“I would like to see more participation from every student because not everybody has the time or the schedule to come when we have the booths out there. This would open (voting) up to a lot more students, like night-time students or students that have one class a week.”
Details like the price difference between paper voting and online voting, and the use of booths and clerks still need to be worked out.
Also Associate Justice and Clerk Victor Macias pointed out that the bylaws would have to be amended with the senate to include online voting.
As a final announcement Assistant to the Coordinator of Student Activities Daniel Gomez said “if you are interested in running in the upcoming election see me or AJ (Student Activities Coordinator Amna Jara) to get the forms.
”Gomez can be found in the ASCC building in the first cubical to the right.
