MSA looks to reform Senate voting system
The clickers could cost up to $5,000.
Published Aug. 27, 2010
The Missouri Students Association is looking to boost efficiency by using an electronic voting system, or clickers, to record attendance and votes during full Senate meetings.
All senators would be required to use a clicker to record their presence at full Senate, said MSA Senate Speaker Evan Wood. The clickers would also keep a record of how he or she voted on a bill.
“The clickers would make senators’ votes more easily available to media and interested students by creating public records,” MSA Budget Chairman Matt Sheppard said.
The Senate voting system in place is a time-consuming hand vote. Attendance is taken by reading names off a roster.
“I think clickers are almost certainly a better way to track votes and take attendance than our current system,” MSA Operations Chairman Justin Mohn said. “In terms of simplicity and accountability, clickers are almost entirely a positive idea.”
Using clickers would decrease the amount of time spent on controversial votes, which can be inefficient, Wood said.
But not everyone is voting "yes." The clickers have been estimated to cost between $2,000 and $5,000. MSA Senator David Teeghman said MSA would end up spending closer to $5,000 because that figure includes a lifetime subscription to the service required to make clickers work.
“That’s a ridiculous amount of money to spend on something that would prove to be a logistical nightmare and not really be that useful,” Teeghman said. “We average about one controversial vote each Senate meeting. Eighty percent of the time, a voice vote is enough.”
There is also concern about from which fund the money to purchase the clickers will come.
“There are definitely better uses for $5,000 worth of contingency and reserve money than making our own jobs easier,” Mohn said. “It is a long year, so to spend that money on ourselves right out of the gate does not seem right to me. If we take it out of Senate's operating budget, though, it wouldn't be an issue.”
According to MSA bylaws, contingency and reserve funds shall be used to assist MSA programs, departments, auxiliaries and events.
The installment of clickers in the Senate is in a preliminary stage, and no decision has been made as to whether the clickers will be used.
“We don’t really have a good bid yet,” Mohn said. “Once we have an accurate idea of what kind of costs we would be looking at, we will be in a better place to address whether clickers are worth the cost.”