The Highlander
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, RIVERSIDE
VOL. 66, ISSUE 14
For the week of Tuesday, January 30, 2018
est. 1954
POWER DOWN Laptopping — the political practice of approaching a student and coercing them to vote on an insecure electronic device — was banned from the 2018 ASUCR elections following a 9-1-0 vote during Wednesday’s State of Association meeting.
JIMMY LAI / HIGHLANDER
ASUCR bans laptopping from 2018 elections
EVAN ISMAIL Senior Staff Writer
On Wednesday, Jan. 24, ASUCR senators voted to officially ban laptopping from the 2018 elections with a vote of 9-1-0. This decision comes after senators banned political parties Wednesday, Jan. 17 after a contentious debate that resulted in a vote of 4-3-9. The bill on laptopping was scheduled to be discussed during the Jan. 17 meeting, but tabled after senators agreed there should be more time to deliberate on the topic. Around 7:15 p.m. this past Wednesday, CHASS Senator Carolyn Chang motioned to take the bill, titled SB-W18016 or Senate Bill on Laptopping, off of the table, which was seconded by CHASS Senator Marco Ornelas. Executive Vice President Carisha Moore opened the speaker’s list from the galley allowing 10 minutes for those who wanted to speak for or against the bill. The first group to speak was those for the ban on laptopping, beginning with Bradley Evans, an electrical engineering and computer science
student who previously served in the US Marine Corps with the rank of sergeant, working as a cryptographic materials custodian and communications specialist. Evans also taught communications security at the Joint Expeditionary Warfare Laboratory in the Coronado naval base near San Diego. Regarding laptopping, Evans described an experience he had during the 2015 elections, where former CHASS Senator Jonathan Javier approached Evans and asked him to vote on Javier’s computer. “I was really baffled by the interaction because here, a stranger was asking me to provide my personal login credentials onto a machine that was clearly a privately owned computer,” said Evans to the senate. Evans said that he was convinced someone was trying to scam him. He then explained that when he tried to warn others away and questioned Javier’s ethics, he was told by Javier that he was “‘just one opinion. You don’t matter.’” Evans requested an apology for the treatment he received by Javier following his win, only to be told by then-ASUCR President Ashley Harano “that the President of ASUCR has nothing to
do with elections, and that it is not her concern,” stated Evans. “This was my first impression of this body (ASUCR), and it has been a lasting one,” he said. He later criticized ASUCR, suggesting that the reason they want to keep laptopping around is because “this body has failed its students. It has failed to do any meaningful outreach more effective than laptopping.” With numerous white papers written to the chancellor, four past ASUCR presidents and an op-ed in the Highlander, Evans called laptopping “textbook phishing.” He explained that the security costs of laptopping are tremendous and that a “talented collection of political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, historians, scientists and engineers, and many others such as what is here could come up with a better, more ethical — and, most critically, a safer and more secure — way of reaching out to students and encouraging their participation.” ASUCR President Aram Ayra shared Evans’ concerns in his speech to the senate. “We are putting students at an unnecessary risk during elections,” stated Ayra, continuing, “we (used) to have paper ballots, we (used) to have just poll-
ing sites and it worked just fine.” Ayra advocated outreach to bring voters to the polls, instead of relying on tools like laptopping. Ayra cited a conversation he had with LGBT Resource Center Director Nancy Tubbs in which she expressed her concern with Costo Hall being used in the conversation of laptopping as, in Ayra’s words, a “political throw-around.” Ayra added that “they (Costo Hall) don’t exist for that reason, they do a lot of amazing, tangible work on campus and they shouldn’t be used as a shield to hide behind every time you (the senate) don’t want to make a decision on a stance.” Ayra closed with the point that ASUCR’s decision to ban laptopping would “really (add to) the change that this student government so desperately needs.” The practicality of enforcing a ban on laptopping was a key point of ASUCR Judicial Council Chief Justice Casey Thielhart. He explained that, when running as a CHASS senator in 2015, laptopping was problematic despite an official ban on the practice. ► SEE ASUCR, PAGE 4