Associated Students of Madison representatives play a large role in providing student services and determining financial support for student organizations, but still about only one in 10 students vote in ASM's campus-wide elections each year.
This spring, ASM hopes to change that, according to the Student Election Commission Chair Kate Wehrman.
“To increase turnout, the commission is working to find advertising methods that are really going to resonate with students,” Wehrman told The Daily Cardinal.
Turnout for last year’s spring election was about 11 percent. This was a significant improvement over 2015, when 7 percent of students cast ballots.
Wehrman says one way to reach students is to have a larger social media presence.
“The commission is hoping to expand our social media advertising to platforms such as Snapchat and Instagram,” Wehrman said. “We also hope to further our message by creating consistency across both our social media outlets and digital advertisements.”
Events promoting the election are another way that ASM leaders are trying to get students tuned into the election. One such event took place Thursday night, as current and potential representatives gathered at the Chazen Museum of Art to meet with potential voters.
Stuart Deets, president of the Chazen Student Ambassadors and the organizer of the event, stressed the importance of student-involvement in electing ASM representatives.
“ASM does a lot of really important and amazing work for UW students, and often times people don’t even know what ASM is,” Deets said. “We’re just providing a space for … [representatives] to interact with people.”
Diego Villegas, a freshman ASM representative who attended the event, said student government serves a vital role on campus, especially following Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal allowing students to opt out of their allocable segregated fees.
Because ASM uses students’ allocable fees to provide funding for a number of campus organizations, Walker’s proposal sparked backlash on campus. Villegas said he hopes this will inspire more students to vote.
“I continually post about the dangers of students not paying their allocable seg fees, and I hope that [students] really care about it as much as I do,” Villegas said.
He also said that it is important for students to be informed and vote, because ASM has more influence than many may think.
“Low turnout already shows that a lot of people don’t care, but then they get upset with our decisions,” Villegas said. “You start to realize that students actually have a lot of say in how money is distributed on this campus.”
This year, elections will be held between March 6 and March 8. Students can vote online for candidates in a number of open seats.
