CAMPUS AND AREA
University Daily Kansan, March 1, 1984
Page 8
A KU student costs her bail for candidates running for student-body president and vice president. University officials said yesterday that more than 1,000 students had voted.
Sandi Moles/KANSAN
Voting machines might not return
The League of Women Voters and the Shawnee County Election Commission rescued the Student Senate in this election.
By CINDY HOLM Staff Reporter
Staff Reporter
The saga is not over, though. Neither the league nor the voting machines borrowed from Shawnee County have secured for future Senate elections.
Mary S. Hope, Shawnee County election commissioner, said recently that the state needed the voting rights of all voters by October until the end of November.
rernmore, the voting machines used in this election will not be available when next year's election comes around.
The next Student Senate election is scheduled for Nov. 14 and 15.
HOPE ALSO said the voting machines probably could not be programmed to handle the number of candidates who run in Senate general elections.
in the past, the Senate has failed to respond to recommendations to clean up its procedural mess.
Katherine Berkowitz, project coordinator for the Lawrence chapter of the League of Women Voters, said the campaign had focused about working in future elections.
"To my knowledge," Berkowitz said, the league is considering this a option.
In the past, Senate elections officials have attempted to persuade the Senate to use outside agencies for counting ballots.
Jim Clark, chairman of last fall's Senate Elections Committee, said he had contacted Manpower Temporary Attorneys in accordance to count the ballots last fall
Senate officials rejected the proposal, be said, because of the cost.
Last April, a University Judicial Board under chairman Laurence Rose, professor of law, recommended that the Senate revise its election rules to prevent problems.
KAREN JELTZ, assistant director of Student Organizations and Activities and a supervisor of last semester's vote counting, said that in previous elections, teams of four students had counted the votes.
"I don't like the idea that we couldn't handle it ourselves," he said. "I can't believe there wasn't an unbiased vote counting procedure available on campus."
One student read names off the ballots to two students who kept separate tallies, she said. The fourth student acted as an observer and ensured that the counters periodically verified their tallies.
Election
If the tallies were not equal, she said,
the students counted the stack again
Ann Eversole, director of Student Organizations and Activities; said she favored using voting machines because they eliminated human error in tallying.
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Tom Berger, chairman of a Student Senate special elections committee and a former senator, said that allegations of misconduct in the counting arose every year and that the Senate needed the action to improve its procedures.
"If they think this is the answer to the election problems," he said, "they're not farsighted enough."
The board acted on a complaint filed by Kevin
"It seems to me that Student Senate, with the many resources it has, should be able to work out some plan so that campus resources can conduct the election."
unfortunate in the long run if the Senate permanently relied on an outside group for personnel to run the election.
Berger, too, said that an organization outside the Senate but within the University should run the election.
Walker, Momentum Coalition presidential candidate, and Teoorten, the vice presidential candidate. The complaint alleged voting irregularities such as biased election officials, lack of security in handling ballots, unchecked electionering and ballot box stuffing.
The board recommended that "Student Senate scrutinize its own procedures and take steps necessary to eliminate election irregularities in future years that may have occurred this year.
"One possible step is to arrange for an independent agency and staff to coordinate and manage."
But now Cramer thinks that ignoring the problems was a mistake.
Jim Clark, chairman of last fall's Elections Committee, said in September that the 1982 election rules had been vague and ambiguous.
Cramer said he and Lisa Ashner, student body president, did not respond to the recommendation because it came late in the year. Also he said, they thought the complaints that had led to the decision were unjustified because the complaint abused the rules.
In the 1883 election, he said, election officials and candidates would know the rules from the beginning of the campaign.
"If you spell it out clearly at the beginning and rely on the candidates' individual integrity." Clark said, "you can eliminate a lot of problems."
Last week Clark said that he had done everything possible to prevent problems in the election but that nothing seemed to work. Controversy plagued the Elections Committee during the entire campaign and election.
One of the problems was the undefined size of the Elections Committee. On Oct. 26, 17 members of the committee reversed a decision made on Oct. 24 by nine members.
In that situation, the Elections Committee voted 5-4 to place the names of the Momentum candidates on the ballot even though they had missed the filing deadline. Two days later, the committee reversed its decision by a vote of 15 to ?
Walker had missed the Oct. 17 filing deadline because he could not confirm his enrollment.
Clark said the committee had reversed its original decision because only nine of "about 40 members" on the committee had heard Walker's appeal and had made the decision.
Smith, adviser to the Senate, said. "With the flexible size of the committee, it's hard to imagine how the committee avoided problems before this."
Walker later charged eight members of the committee with conflict of interest when he found out that they were members of Alpha Phi sorority, the sorority Ashner belonged to.
At the beginning of the semester Clark had solicited membership for his committee from all living groups on campus. Several Alpha Phi applied and the committee accepted all of them.
Cramer said the Senate placed no restrictions on Elections Committee membership. Any student can apply to the committee, and the chairman selects members.
"I think that in the past the Elections Committee chairman has been sensitive to political differences," he said.
tendency to get any two warm bodies to work the polls."
Clark said he had asked committee members whether they had ties to any of the candidates before they joined the committee. No members said that they had a conflict of interest.
But one of the members on last fall's committee was Kevin Walker's running mate in 1982.
Clark said Tepoorten had told him that a longer had ties to the Momentum Coalition, so Clark had allowed Tepoorten to join the committee.
However, Clark said that he had excluded Teoporten from working the polls when Teoporten began to show favoritism toward the Momentum Coalition.
Tpoorten said last week that he had joined the committee to monitor its decisions on behalf of
Walker took an appeal to the University Judicial Board that eventually led to the order for a new election.
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beer and other refreshments will be sold