Beginning in May, the Associated Student of Madison will have a new set of faces seated at the table after spring election votes were tallied for representatives and a change in ASM’s constitution Wednesday.
This year the group saw a 9 percent voter turnout—3,629 completed ballots—among the student body, down from 11 percent from last year. Student Election Commission Chair Kate Wehrman said that the turnout difference wasn’t shocking based on past years, and the lower number was likely due to fewer students running on a ticket platform like the Blindside group in 2016.
The Student Council highest vote-getter was Kaiyang Chen at 1,213 votes for Letters and Science, which has the largest voter base among the different colleges represented. The incoming representative from the School of Education, winner Jesse Galvan, earned the lowest number of votes, 11, for his seat representing a university college.
This election also saw a nondiscrimination amendment to the ASM Constitution pass with 90 percent approval from all voters.
The amendment will alter the Declaration of Rights article and provide greater protection to underrepresented groups to ensure that no matter who they are, all students will be represented by ASM, according to the amendment author Rep. Brooke Evans.
With the change, the section now includes many additional identities not previously stated such as language ability, citizenship status, occupation, diverse ability, religion, military service and several more.
“Every student, no matter their classification of any kind, has a right to be served by this body,” Evans said. “I wanted to make sure regardless of who was elected to this body in the future that they understood what their job was.”
