Editorial

Something Really Stupid This Way Comes

This year, ASUO elections are being held in February, as opposed to the traditional March-April stretch.

The reason for this lies in a rule change affecting the date that the recommendation for incidental fees - the platelets in the lifeblood of student government - must be submitted to the state of Oregon. No matter; the result will be the same. The result is always the same.

Stupidity will reign.

Stupidity reigns in the form of a flurry of grievances that rarely change the outcome of the election.

Stupidity reigns in the overuse of the phrases "accessibility," "student rights," "diversity," and any number of other vague buzzwords used by candidates who have no intention of following through on their promises.

Stupidity reigns in the form of joke candidates whose main purpose is to amuse themselves and cause as much of a headache for the Elections Board as humanly possible. Stupidity reigns everywhere, though this year, you can expect to see stupidity in a number of interesting places.

Some four years after the Elections Board's first attempt to hold elections online, the ASUO has finally got it figured out. They think.

Last year, after a handful of students discovered that, with a little sleight-of-hand, they could vote as many times as they wanted to in the primaries, the online voting option was called off, and votes in the general election were counted the old-fashioned way.

With a history as illustrious behind them, the hubris behind the Elections Board's decision to take voting online exclusively is a risky gambit at best, and flat-out stupid at worst.

Further complicating matters is the oft-tested rule barring all campaigning within fifty feet of a voting booth, which presents a set of likely disaster scenarios separate from the already tenuous networking and maintenance difficulties which thwarted the 96-97 online process.

Technically, now that all voting is done through DuckWeb, any computer on the UO campus is a possible voting booth. Will the Board put a volunteer in every campus computer lab to monitor persuasive screensavers and websites? Will the employees of each lab take it upon themselves to monitor a policy which will only distract them from their standard routine of WarCraft and calculus homework?

Or will anarchy rule? Don't forget - we're talking about Eugene here. ,p % Speaking of which, how about those anarchists? According to Mayor Jim Torrey, you're going to school in the "anarchist capital of the world." p Well, isn't that something?

In any case, they're having enough fun disrupting the Eugene elections, unless you count Joel Rueber. The Progressive Slate's absence from the scene this time round the ballot box is undeniably a good thing, even in light of short-term losses. The best example, of course, is the initially catastrophic candidate turnout - that is, until the Elections Board extended the deadline three, count 'em, three times. Due to this, we are in store for a couple of sure things:

a) Candidates even less worthy of your vote than the already incompetent candidates of years past.
b) Plaintive editorials from the Emerald bemoaning voter apathy and the death of democracy.

In related news, there have been nearly as many departures upstairs at everyone's favorite stepping stone to a dead-end career in journalism, the Ol' Dirty Emerald.

The faces of the trained monkeys have changed, but it hasn't pulled the Emerald out of the tired, uninspired abyss Editor Laura Cadiz has bravely led the staff into. New trained monkeys are still trained monkeys.

While the student government spins in circles, the Emerald continues to run plaintive pleas for diversity, recipes as part of their cover stories, and stubbornly milk the turn of the century in the same manner as they did their own centennial last year.

Scott Austin, finally, has thrown his hat into the race for the Executive. Having exhausted all other forms of involvement with the ASUO, he's finally going big time. Whether he wins the popular vote of his peers or is decisively crushed by Sinister Students United for Left-Handed Rights candidate Dan Atkinson, only time will tell. Truth told, Austin's infamous past with the ASUO makes it difficult to assess this in such a way as to satisfy everyone. Perhaps if they learn to ignore him, he will go away. On the other hand, it probably wouldn't make a difference.

Well, that's it. If the incoherent manner of this editorial has your head spinning, then just wait for the bloody thing to get under way.

Have your grievance forms handy.