USG campaign process fails to court campus voters effectively

I have a confession to make: I didn't vote in the USG elections. But I take that back — this article is not a confession because I don't feel any guilt. Let me explain. I cast my non-vote as a reaction to an election system in which very little information is provided about each candidate. As far as I can tell, four ways exist to learn about them: campus advertisements, Tigervision, candidate statements and the 'Prince's endorsements. Allow me to complain about these methods one at a time.

Campus advertisements, which mainly consist of fliers posted around campus, tell me close to nothing about the candidate. Am I so stupid as to vote for someone because I see his or her name on light posts more often than someone else's? Will the not-so-subtle "Vote for Me" signs convince me? Or some pathetic slogan? Hardly. But maybe the picture will do it? If I can associate the name with a face? Not quite. Bright color? Cartoon picture? Now we're getting desperate.

While I'm bombarded with campus fliers that I have to look at whether I like it or not, I don't bother with the Tigervision presentation of candidates. I don't own a television and I've never seen Tigervision. Spence Miller '02, current USG vice-president, agreed that the TV broadcast was ineffective because "no one watches it."

The candidate statements seem to provide the most information. But these are only 120 words long, and after reading three or four they all begin to sound the same: "I will hear your voice," "You need a leader with vision," "Princeton is on the brink of a new millennium." Those few that suggest some type of platform rarely offer different proposals.

If candidate statements are simply annoying, 'Prince' endorsements are downright offensive. I don't like it when others tell me how to vote, especially when it comes from a group that is not representative of campus, does not know many of the candidates personally and has interviewed them for only 10 minutes.

I suspect most students vote for the candidate they know on a personal level. Maybe the vote-winner is a friend or gave a nice smile in the dining hall. Being a friend's friend usually suffices. I certainly hope campus fliers don't convince anyone.

Some of these problems are easy to solve. Wade Rakes '02, co-chair of the Projects Board and a presidential candidate, suggested raising the number of signatures a candidate must receive before allowing him or her to run. "I wouldn't say that getting 500 signatures is out of line," Rakes said. "If you have to get 500 signatures, you have to be very serious."

I would like to see longer candidate statements that outline not only what candidates plan to do, but what they have done. I don't find a list of previously held positions to be informative or persuasive. I want to know what the candidate actually accomplished while acting as class senator or chair of some obscure committee.

But what do our elected representatives accomplish? Other than pesky e-mails, once they're elected we never seem to hear from them again. The current system holds no one accountable. Our president is a lame duck from day one. And the more candidate statements I read, and the more I examine the governmental process on campus, I questions students' true motivations for running for office. What is their level of commitment? Do they really want to serve the University? Or is this simply another resume booster?

Maybe there are underlying reasons we do not get more information on the candidates. There might simply not be much more to say. Perhaps they have promised too much already. As Rakes asked, "Do we need a USG? An elected USG? Do we need all the fluff?" Nathan Arrington is a classical archaeology major from Westport, Conn. He can be reached at arington@princeton.edu.