The Students’ Association sent an email to the student body during February to ask students to vote on potential amendments to Students’ Association Constitution. The proposed amendments included bills such as an appointment for treasurer, the president and vice president being able to run on the same ticket and even changing the name of SA to Student Government Association.

Amendments and having the student body vote on those amendments even after Congress has passed them is democratic, but this isn’t exactly what happened with voting here. After clicking on the link to vote, you were asked if you trust the decisions of the SA Congress. If you said that you did trust them, your vote was cast immediately in favor the Congress decision. The only way that you were able to receive more information was if you said that you did not trust Congress.

There are a few problems here. One was the misleading question asked instead of a simple vote in favor or vote against. There is a clear difference between trusting SA congress and allowing for them to cast your vote for you; trusting Congress should not be an issue in the voting process.

The only way for somebody to get more information on the bills or to vote on bills individually was to say that they didn’t trust Congress. There is a key difference between asking a misleading question and straight-ticket voting, however. When somebody was to straight-ticket vote for an entire slate of candidates for one party, they know exactly what they are getting themselves into, but the SA voting process was more about confusion than it was about democratic voting.

Most students are going to have trust in their Students’ Association Congress, but this does not guarantee that students won’t want to vote for bills individually or at least get information.