The ASASUD Senate approved four amendments to the elections code procedures at a special session held Friday.
The amendments made adjustments to the constitution regarding how the president and vice president are elected, who approves the elections code and how many senators are to represent each college.
However the special session only addressed a small part of the constitution, junior Sen. Cameron Polom, of University College, said.
“That was a small, small, small sliver of what we’re doing,” Polom said. “For that portion (of the constitution,) that was exactly what we needed.”
Clarifying the elections procedures was an essential task for the Senate, Polom said.
“Defining our elections procedure was the number one amendment we made and that was the main one that needed to get done,” he said.
Polom said that due to an incomplete constitution last year, the election should have required a run-off, but the winner was determined by the sheer number of votes instead.
“If we aren’t able to amend everything that we want to for this constitution this semester, at least we have clarified the elections, that way we make sure everything goes smoothly in the spring,” Polom said.
Director of Administration Olga Lykhvar, nonprofit senior, introduced the amendments to the Senate at the Oct. 30 meeting.
“The reason why I urged the Senate to vote for at least the elections part of the amendments was because the amendments don’t take effect until next semester,” Lykhvar said. “The student body needs to vote on them ASAP, so that they can actually take action next semester and so that it will affect the elections process next semester, correctly.”
To get approval and create a link where students can vote, Lykhvar said it takes almost one and a half weeks once the Senate has voted in favor of the amendments. Once the link is created, students need to be notified and have time to vote, she added.
“If they wait until next semester to do any amendments then technically they cannot do anything this semester or next semester they can’t vote, they can’t do anything because their constitution doesn’t define how to vote,” Lykhvar said.
Since it takes nearly three weeks to complete the amendment process, the Senate is running out of time, Lykhvar said. If the Senate waits much beyond this week, it will be too late.
“That’s already the end of the semester and then it’s finals,” Lykhvar said. “Nobody is going to care what the constitution is (during finals,) including me.”
Director of Parliamentary Procedures and Chair of the Judiciary Board Lisa Diaz, journalism sophomore, said she has been working diligently on constitutional reform.
“We are currently having meetings to go over the constitution,” Diaz said. “Not only for all the grammatical stuff, but there are also things that are just completely left out.”
Some of those things include the procedure for using student fee money, Diaz said.
“There really are no guidelines,” she said. “There is still a lot of work to be done.”
Diaz said that the elections code amendments were a good start.
“They fixed a lot that needed to be fixed in the specific elections category and the elections committee needs to get rolling on preparations for elections stuff,” Diaz said.
However, Diaz said there is a lot more that needs to get done before the end of the semester.
“We’re definitely on a tight deadline,” she said. “The pressure is on.”
Diaz said the judiciary board will present the rest of the constitutional amendments at the next Senate meeting on Nov. 13.
Contact the reporter at jvonsche@asu.edu
