As elections near for the Colorado Mesa University Associated Student Government it is time for students to get in the mindset of voting.
“Ben and I are optimists,” ASG Vice President Gabrielle Gile said. “I would say our goal number, if we got it there would be a celebration, would be 2500. That would be a large chunk of the student body. It’s sometimes hard to get people to vote on things, even in national elections, so that would be amazing.”
The president, Ben Linzey and Gile have decided that the bare minimum votes they need is 1000. This would be about ten percent of the student body population. They need at least that many votes in the constitution to pass the bylaws.
“Somewhere in the middle [between 1000 and 2500] would be good for us,” Gile said. “1000 would get us in a good place for the constitution.”
There are a few things that ASG is doing to drive voter turnout. Usually there is just one polling station in the University Center, but this year they are talking about setting up in academic buildings and possibly having clubs run them.
“We are still toying around with some ideas and figuring out the bumps in those plans, but as of now we have a couple things going,” Gile said. “We got stickers this week. We got ‘I Voted’ stickers that we will pass out that they can put on water bottles or wear around and that can be sort of a motivation.”
Last year Gile guessed that they had 700 votes or around that number. She explained that they are hoping for more than that.
There were 784 votes in 2017 compared to 2016’s 820 votes.
“Our goal this year has been to get students more involved in things. Whoever you elect to be in ASG can really make a difference and your experience as a student is not something that doesn’t matter,” Gile said. “Get out there and do it because it can make a difference on campus and make a difference in campus culture.”
Voting is done online only through Orgsync. Any student can follow the link to the Orgsync form. It will include all the candidates bios and photos as well as the constitution proposition.
“I would say it takes about 10 to 12 minutes to fill out,” Gile said. “Your voices are important.”
