After proposing four amendments to the same bill, senators agreed to disagree during Tuesday’s meeting.
Senators debated for more than an hour about the phrasing of an amendment to a bill for how to apply for an absentee ballot for Student Government elections.
The bill, which passed last week, mandated that the supervisor of elections must notify each student about the absentee ballot process in an e-mail. Before it passed, members of the Unite Party added an amendment that permits the supervisor of elections to notify students using means other than e-mail, arguing that notifications were already sent to each student via the Gator Times.
Student Alliance party members, who authored the original bill, said during this week’s meeting that the Gator Times had not mentioned absentee ballots within the past year.
Student Alliance party president Keir Lamont said the Unite Party may not have been intentionally relaying false information, but it was still incorrect.
“We can admit that they were at least misinformed about the statements they made,” Lamont said.
Unite Party Sen. Ben Meyers said SG staff members usually send ballot information to the Gator Times, though the Gator Times does not publish it. Senators did not know this during the last senate meeting, he said.
Members of the Student Alliance party responded by drafting another amendment to the bill Tuesday that would require the supervisor of elections to send the information about absentee voting to the Gator Times. The Unite Party changed that amendment to say students would receive the information by an unspecified “online notification.”
Meyers said the notification could appear in the Gator Times, an e-mail, on the SG website or on ISIS.
“It’s the same thing you’re saying, we’re just being less specific,” Meyers told senators.
Meyers said this wording provided for the fact that the Gator Times might not always be around, and students who do not read it would still get the information.
The supervisor of elections wouldn’t be subject to any negative consequences if the students did not get the information via the Gator Times, Meyers said.
The amendment passed with a vote of 54 to 14.
Unhappy with this new word choice, senators continued to debate.
Last week, Unite Party senators argued that notifications were already sent through the Gator Times, Jonathan Ossip said. This week, he argued that senators did not want to make it a requirement because it was too specific.
“I’m just very confused about which side you want to take,” Ossip told senators.
The final amendment, which passed with the bill, requires the supervisor of elections to send out at least two online notifications to students before SG elections. It does not specify what means will be used.
