Judicial Council Upholds Vote On GA Memorandum
This morning, the Judicial Council released its decision in Narodick v. Elections Council. As expected, the Council upheld the vote approving the Graduate Assembly MOU.
Narodick v. Elections Council Decision (in PDF)
As many loyal CalStuff readers may know, the Judicial Council is generally very reluctant to actually take confrontational stances on elections issues, as, to be perfectly frank, they just don’t care who wins. This quote sums up the attitude of the decision:
…because it is specifically stated that only the “yes” and “no” votes need to be considered, the Judicial Council believes that abstentions should not be taken into consideration in determining whether a referendum passes with a majority vote. The Council also believes that although both the Constitution and By-Laws specify that only votes cast “for and against” a proposition shall be tallied for passage, that it does not limit the voting options to only “yes” or “no.” This phrasing in the Constitution and By-Laws does imply, however, that when a student chooses to abstain, rather than omit a question, that an opinion different from merely skipping the question is expressed. The Judicial Council urges the Elections Council to take this into consideration in future elections – that including an explicit option for abstentions may not be the most accurate way to assess student opinion.
Essentially, it is a general theme that if the Judicial Council can blame someone else for messing the situation up, then they will not take a stand on the issue. In the decision, the JCouncil blames the ASUC Senate for not making the ASUC By-Laws clearer, the Attorney General for approving the language of the question, and the Elections Council for placing the “abstain” option on the ballot - but rather than remedy the situation, gives advice as to how to prevent it in the future.
What does this mean for the rest of the elections? Well, it gives the Judicial Council the opportunity to use a similar opt out in the Ratto v. Vakil decision by claiming that the By-Laws are unclear in the situation. *begin sarcasm* Perjury really needs to be explicitly denied in the By-Laws, since there is a great deal of ambiguity. *end sarcasm* More importantly, the fact that this decision was released at 10 AM on Saturday morning either means Friday night was a long night for the Judicial Council, or Saturday is going to be a long day. Potentially, a decision on the appeal could be forthcoming in the next 48 hours.
I should hope the Judicial Council doesn’t care who wins the elections when they make their decisions. I don’t think they could’ve taken a confrontational stance here because they had nothing to stand on.
It’s really not the Judicial Council’s job to fix things that other folks screw up, if they screw it up in a manner that is still in line with the legal authority they have.
Comment by Beetle — July 22, 2006 @ 10:55 am
tried downloading that file, webfiles is asking for a user/pw
Comment by bobby gregg — July 22, 2006 @ 11:32 am
try again
Comment by Ben N. — July 22, 2006 @ 11:42 am
I think they made the right decision here. The language and choices of the MOA were botched, but there’s no fair way to fix it at this point. If — and I may have this wrong since I haven’t been paying too much attention — we overturned the MOA because there was actually a minority of yes votes when considering the abstentions, that seems to distort the purpose of that third option. It effectively turns an Abstain into a No, which was not necessarily what the voter intended (that was probably more along the lines of “I have no idea what this is and/or I don’t care”). Hopefully the people involved will be more careful next time.
Comment by also anonymous — July 22, 2006 @ 11:51 am
“It effectively turns an Abstain into a No, which was not necessarily what the voter intended (that was probably more along the lines of “I have no idea what this is and/or I don’t care”).”
While I agree, I would also point out that they probably didn’t know it would make it easier for the referendum to pass
There just shouldn’t be an option for abstain — let people leave the question blank if they have no answer.
Comment by bobby gregg — July 22, 2006 @ 12:07 pm
If this were a piss-ant voter opinion poll, or maybe even something changing a bylaw, I would agree. Tie goes to the runner, the Council shouldn’t apply a super strict level of scrutiny. But you don’t screw with the foundational document of the association. You don’t go changing it unless you’re absadamnlutely sure the students want it changed. You can’t be sure here and it shouldn’t be changed. I respect this Council, and this is a valid decision given the text (though I have to criticize the decision, if we’re going by the letter of the law the “abstain” option should never have been given and the vote should be overturned on that alone).
That said, I think this is the biggest mistake the Council has ever made.
Comment by Mike Davis — July 22, 2006 @ 12:12 pm
I don’t think the Council concluded that the “abstain” option should never have been given, nor do I think it could, based on the language of the bylaws and Constitution. While it may not have been a good idea to include it, without something to stand on, the Judicial Council couldn’t possibly have ruled that the Elections Council actually failed to follow the requirements of the law.
Of course, as folks know, I don’t like the Judicial Council having discretion, on democratic principle. In the case of the ASUC, with an incompetent/unprincipled Senate, this causes ridiculous situations such as restructuring the ASUC with 30% of the vote. Still, the alternative, with the Judicial Council trying to determine what the law should be (which would be the case for the Judicial Council to rule in Ben’s favor here) is dangerous.
Out of curiosity, Mike, if you were ruling, how would you rule, and what would you write?
Comment by Beetle — July 22, 2006 @ 5:20 pm
The only part of the referendum that required a vote of the students was the J-council portion of it, which was the only part that changed the constitution.
Maybe it would have been better to split it up, sign the rest once the senate passed it, and only let the Jcouncil portion go to a vote of the whole students (It would have definetly made what students were voting for a lot more clear).
Interestingly, the parts that received the most criticism were the portions that did not require to be part of a referendum. I guess intentions were good in that we wanted to give a choice for students to vote on everything, but it might have ended up confusing them.
Comment by Manny — July 23, 2006 @ 1:42 am
At any rate, I am sure it would have received more yes votes if it was a referendum that only included the JCouncil aspect. Many of the no votes that people told me they casted were as a result of the financial parts of the referendum.
Comment by Manny — July 23, 2006 @ 1:44 am