In the past decade, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s student government, the Associated Students of Madison (ASM), has secured the creation of 24-hour libraries, caps on tuition increases, distribution of bus passes and maintenance of recreational sports facilities – though you would be hard-pressed to find a student on campus who knew it.
ASM, which represents over 48,000 students and is responsible for the allocation of $50 million in segregated university fees, plays a key role in campus as the shared-governance apparatus, yet many students are still uninformed as to what ASM is.
“I’m sure they do things that impact the community, but I wouldn’t know what specifically,” Solana Quezada, a UW-Madison junior, told The Daily Cardinal.
While other Big 10 schools such as the University of California-Los Angeles and University of Michigan continually report voter turnout rates well above 15% of the student body for their student government elections, UW-Madison’s ASM struggles to engage with students as turnout rates in the 2024 spring election fall to a record low 2% of the entire student population.
“I have no idea what I’d be voting for,” Ryder Zvorak, a sophomore at UW-Madison told the Cardinal when asked if he planned to vote during the 2025 spring ASM election.
In six other student interviews with the Cardinal, the answers stayed the same: most were uninformed about the ASM spring election, who their representatives are or how they can vote.
ASM Chair Dominic Zappia told the Cardinal the organization's issue wasn’t necessarily low voter turnout, but rather a lack of awareness of shared governance.
“It is just generally hard to get engaged with students on campus because there is so much noise, so much information, so many RSOs,” said Zappia.
Another explanation may be the passage of Act 55 in 2015.
Signed into law by the former Gov. Scott Walker and Republican-controlled state Legislature, Act 55 revised the role of students from “active participants” with a voice in policy development, to a counseling body that could only advise the chancellor.
“Since 2014, ASM has been an advisory body and not a governing body,” ASM Legislative Chair Ethan Jackowski told the Cardinal. “That means what ASM does, and the memory of it and the student population has changed over time…I feel like a lot of students just aren't aware of what we're doing.”
Now, nearly 10 years later, ASM’s diminished responsibilities may be a contributing factor in the organization’s rapidly declining voter turnout rate.
But despite these challenges, ASM and members of UW-Madison administration have proposed plans to bring students back to the polls.
“We’ve talked to campus stakeholders, administrators who are down to increase the visibility in elections and continuing partnership with the unions and rec well spaces and having advertising and promotion there,” said Zappia. “We’re exploring more proactive stuff. Last year, we did a lot of tabling at Memorial Union.”
During a roundtable discussion last spring, university administrators told reporters “we are excited about working with the ASM student leaders going forward, not just about voter turnout, but about students valuing the work that ASM does.”
Although the ASM spring election isn’t until March, efforts towards connecting with students may have already begun to manifest.
“I know not a lot of people vote in ASM elections, so I know if I vote, my vote might actually do a lot more than I think,” said freshman Ishan Sridastava.
