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Graduate Student Association incumbent presidential candidate Jared Fox hands out fliers and talk

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Voting for the Graduate Student Association election begins today at noon, and campaigning is in full force, though much of it is not visible on campus.

The online election was promoted by e-mail and through fliers from candidates that were posted and put in department mailboxes.

Additionally, voting incentives, including a coupon for a free tall coffee or soda for every voter, a $15 gift certificate to the UCLA Store for every 50th voter and cash prizes for academic councils with high turnout, encourage students to vote in what candidates predict could be the election with the highest turnout in recent years.

Jared Fox, a second-year graduate student in computer science and current GSA president running for reelection under the GSA Experience slate, said this year’s rivalry between two opposing slates is the first he can remember in GSA’s recent history.

Slates are groups of candidates with similar platforms who run together to increase their chances of winning positions.

This year’s campaign, which is more contested than those in the past, promises to be more visible, based on the funds candidates are spending. Fox said last year he did not spend any money campaigning, but this year he may spend up to $100.

Lisa Linehan, a first-year graduate student in social welfare and an independent candidate for vice president of internal affairs, said she also may spend up to $100.

Campaigning independently of a slate has allowed for greater name recognition, she said, because she believes fliers promoting slates confuse some graduate students.

Increasing participation by candidates is expected to increase voter turnout from last year’s 17 percent, Fox said.

“In the past there have been slates, but sometimes people that ran under a slate would be unopposed. It’s never been as contested as this,” he said. “It’s possible that the turnout will be very, very high.”

Fox said he anticipates the most visible display of campaigning will be Thursday’s Election Grad Bar, a mixer aimed to promote the elections. Until then he is relying on word of mouth and fliers to promote his candidacy and his slate.

Fox added that his slate would not engage in any negative campaigning and encouraged undecided voters to speak to him and others who were involved with GSA this year, or knew most of the candidates.

Linehan said she was also relying on word of mouth and high turnout in her own department.

From conversations with graduate students, she said she realized that many students do not know what GSA is, and awareness needs to improve.

She believes her campaign has done just that.

“Hopefully I will win, but even if I don’t, I feel that I’ve done something for GSA and that campaigning was by no means a waste of time,” Linehan said.

Voting incentives, which have been used for at least seven years, can cost GSA up to $2,400, but they have been deemed necessary because fee referendums require a 10 percent vote to pass.

GSA elections have had notoriously low participation, and the elections budget must be passed months before elections, making runoffs undesirable.

Linehan also said she believed the voting incentives would be effective, and she advertised them on her fliers and through word of mouth.

“While I would like people to vote for me, I really want people to vote in general,” she said.

But Monica Sanchez, a second-year graduate student in the School of Education and candidate for vice president of internal affairs with the new slate Graduates Representing Educating Advocating Transforming, disagreed, saying the incentives encourage voting for the wrong reasons.

“I don’t want them to vote because of the free coffee. I would rather like them to vote because they like what I’m saying or what our campaign is about,” she said, adding that her slate had not been promoting the voting incentives, and instead campaigning on issues.

Sanchez said her slate has posted fliers, targeting its own and neighboring departments. GREAT has not spent its own funds, but had a party with about 20 guests who made contributions, and Sanchez has been using office supplies she has at home.

GREAT’s interdisciplinary makeup is one of its strengths, Sanchez said. The candidates are from the School of Law and the School of Education.

Sanchez believes that aside from the fraction of the graduate students who have been targeted in campaigns or know one of the candidates, the rest of the graduate body is generally unaware of the elections.

“One of our goals is to try to get those who don’t know to vote, to give them information,” she said.