Despite efforts by the Student Union to increase voter participation and fill more Union positions, election results from last Thursday's votes indicate continued low levels of participation—particularly among upperclassmen—and further "abstain" victories, despite the introduction of a "skip" option for individual ballots.

The "skip" option, introduced in a Sept. 18 Union press release, allows voters the opportunity to move past a given ballot without casting a vote for "abstain," which, if it receives the "greatest number of votes," causes the office in question to remain vacant until the next election, according to the Union constitution.

According to the press release, the "skip" option was added "in response to problems with [the Union's] voting system" and so that students could "express their right not to vote without penalizing the candidates."

In the spring 2011 elections, there were only four senators elected out of a possible 10. This was due in large part to the fact that "abstain," rather than any of the candidates, received the greatest number of votes.

In an interview with the Justice, Union President Herbie Rosen '12 noted that, based on conversations with students, a "majority of people had pressed skip at least once."

However, Rosen also noted that because data is not collected on it, there is no official way to measure the extent to which the new "skip" option was used.

What can be measured is the number of students who abstained on a particular ballot.

For example, over the course of the past two elections, only two of the five seats were filled on the Student Judiciary. Yet the number of abstentions in those votes fell from 223 last spring to 146 this fall.

The number of abstentions for the position of senator at large remained practically the same: In the spring, 216 abstained, while in this election, 224 abstained.

Positions such as the senator for the Mods, senator for Charles River, racial minority senator and three seats on the SJ remain unfilled because of "abstain" victory.

After Rosen was elected president last spring, he said in an April interview with the Justice, "Not even 50 percent of the student body voted, which bothers me. But it was still a large percentage … I want more student involvement."

This week, Rosen acknowledged in an interview with the Justice that students tend to vote in higher percentages for the spring presidential elections.

For this fall's elections, Rosen and the Union made an effort to encourage student involvement. This push included a Union table in Usdan Café, Rosen driving a golf cart around campus asking trivia questions and offering students rides in exchange for correct answers, and an additional email of encouragement from Rosen after Kirkland sent out the voting instructions.

Despite these efforts, participation in the fall 2011 elections fell short on certain ballots when compared to results from a year ago.

Showing the most enthusiasm in last week's elections were the first-years, while lackluster participation rates of less than 15 percent were recorded for some largely upperclassmen positions.

According to the voting data, 42.8 percent of eligible voters voted for the senator for the Class of 2015 position. Comparably, in fall 2010, when the Class of 2014 was new to Brandeis, 44.86 percent of first-years voted for the Class of 2014 senator.

In fall 2011, voter participation rates in the elections of senators for the Charles River apartments, the Foster Mods and Off-Campus senator were about 4, 14 and 7 percent, respectively—low, though not markedly different from fall 2010 rates of 5.5, 10 and 8 percent.

Participation rates in electing senators for the Classes of 2013 and 2012 this fall stood at about 13 percent for each. These positions were elected this semester because they were left unfilled—all candidates having been beaten by "abstain"—in the second round of spring 2011 elections.

In the Castle senator elections, the 32.74 percent voter participation in fall 2011 was notably larger than the 12 percent participation in fall 2010.

As might be expected, the introduction of a "skip" option had no apparent effect on the positions of senator for the Charles River Apartments, senator for the Foster Mods and Racial Minority senator, all of which lacked official candidates in this latest election and are thus currently unfilled.

Rosen remarked Sunday on the unfilled positions: "Those constituencies didn't seem interested."

"We are going to always battle for improvement. We inherited an organization that needs to improve its reputation, and we have to battle against that apathy," added Rosen.