When no one wins, we lose

Another year, another IU Student Association election, another mess.\nThe court battles between tickets after the IUSA election have become as much a part of the election process as tickets' promises to bring more books and beer to campus. Just as ridiculous, too.\nIt's tempting to call these fake lawsuits pointless. But for the tickets involved, a lot rides on them. The ticket installed as the next IUSA administration, either by winning the vote or winning its case, controls a budget of tens of thousands of dollars. Its executives get nice stipends for themselves, too, whether they do anything or not. With so much at stake, is it any surprise the tickets choose to contest every election? There's no penalty for filing frivolous complaints, and the payoff is enormous.\nThe result is a dysfunctional system. During the campaign, most candidates try to appeal to students by claiming IUSA can do things it can't, like making IU-Bloomington a "wet" campus. At the same time, they reach out to the Greek community and freshmen in the residence halls to get most of their votes from people who can't even name all of the tickets running. After the election, they file as many complaints against the other tickets as possible.\nIt's not a disaster for students that the system discourages real leaders from running in favor of people with shallower skills. A weak IUSA's costs are mainly in improvements foregone -- fees not lightened, arguments not made, opportunities not seized. Over the years, of course, these missed chances add up -- but no individual is responsible.\nThere is a relatively simple solution: Streamline the IUSA election process, perhaps even take it out of the group's control entirely. This year's far less-serious problems in the RHA election underscored how rare it is for that group (or Union Board) to have difficulties in running their elections. Only IUSA has proven constantly incapable of holding a swift and fair election. \nThere are other, more technical changes that could be made, too, like using Instant Runoff Voting (www.fairvote.org/irv) to guarantee any ticket that does win has a majority of the votes cast. At the very least, the elections code should be clear and unambiguous -- we have many fine professors of law here, perhaps they can help.\nBut who will make these changes? There's little chance for reform from the inside, as the current administration owes its place to the system as it is today. \nMaybe students will demand better from IUSA. Probably not. And who can blame them?