On Monday, Sept. 14, after weeks of planning and campaigning, I was mortified to see the Student Government freshman senator ballot missing my name. A few frantic phone calls confirmed that it wasn’t just my ballot with this egregious error; every one of my friends and classmates had been sent an election form that failed to list me as a candidate. I stood frozen with confusion and flushed with a hot wave of embarrassment and indignation.
Apparently, this is a common occurrence in Student Government elections.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the role of distributing ballots was shifted to Student Affairs because they had the power to send mass emails to the entire student body at a time when in-person voting was impossible. After three years of relatively stable elections, the person from Student Affairs formerly in charge of the ballots left and was replaced by Relius Johnson, Director of Data Analytics, Training & Assessment for Student Affairs. From 2025 to 2026, Johnson has been tasked with the creation and distribution of Student Government ballots. Each year, he has failed spectacularly.
Ballots have regularly been sent out containing deadnames, misspellings and missing candidates. During the election last fall, the ballot had to be sent out five times due to Student Affairs’ mistakes. Some of these emails contained broken links and many ignored concerns directly expressed by SG leadership. Johnson also fell short on listing tickets of candidate pairings, entirely omitting this essential piece of SG campaigns. During my election, I was left off the ballot and another candidate was placed in the wrong race, despite both of us properly filing for election.
Accidents that might, on an infrequent basis, be forgivable as human mistakes have compounded to create an election system where error is expectation and fraud is frequent.
When the fall 2026 ballot was released, I was deeply embarrassed as I thought about all the people I had asked to vote for me — the ones who were now opening an incomplete ballot. I have been an active member of one Student Council or another since the fourth grade, and I would never have imagined a clerical error being the deciding factor in whether I got to continue with that path. If the student body didn’t elect me, then so be it, but I refused to let a technical problem take me out of the running.
Immediately, I went to the Student Government office and met with SG Vice President Farhan Iqbal, who reassured me that this situation was not my fault. Soon after our meeting, Baker informed me that he had “contacted the individual responsible for making the ballot to have them correct the issue” and that “this was something [he] specifically flagged for them, and they missed it.” That Monday and Tuesday were hopelessly stressful, as ballots were unsuccessfully edited and eventually redone, but I am eternally grateful that both Iqbal and Baker took my concerns seriously and helped in every way they could.
I was elected to the freshman senate on a dangerously close margin, but it was enough and I was sworn in. I think the positive end to a frustrating week is part of the reason it is so important that I share this story. I have the privilege of commentating on the Student Government’s historically flawed election system without sounding like a sore loser. There are countless other would-be senators in the Student Government’s history who have lost elections because of preventable mistakes completely out of their control.
Senators cannot claim to represent the student body when we were elected in an utterly undemocratic system.
Student Government senators are given the power to create and vote on proposals, resolutions and allocations that impact everyone at UTD, yet we are not doing everything in our power to ensure the process of election is functioning properly and democratically.
There will be no justice and no representation without change. Thankfully, at both the Sept. 29 and Oct. 13 SG Senate meetings, Baker declared his intentions to internalize the election system, making it similar to how it was before the pandemic. As the newly elected Special Elections Board Chair, Baker is hoping to trial run this new system with the special election for vice president, occurring late this semester. If this shift is realized, Student Government, not Student Affairs, would be in charge of creating and distributing the ballots. Beyond the benefits of taking this role away from an office that has shown itself prone to frequent errors, this would also allow SG to utilize a universal link and verify student identities.
The individual link system that Student Affairs currently uses was the reason that, even after refreshing, my name would not appear on the ballot for anyone who had already opened the form. Instead, an entirely new ballot had to be sent out. In the Senate meeting, Baker proposed changing the individual link to a universal link, which would have everyone answer the same form, only with varying races depending on the classification of the voter.
A universal link also has the advantage that it can be turned into a QR code, unlike the current individual links. This would enable SG to table with QR codes to encourage students to vote and would allow for the creation of posters students could scan to easily submit a ballot. In recent years, voter rates have been astonishingly low, with only 2.5% of the student body voting, but a universal link could help alleviate this issue.
Baker’s proposed ballot would also alleviate the current issues surrounding voter verification. Currently, students self-identify with a college and classification. This means that despite being a freshman in EPPS, I could simply claim to be a BBS junior and vote in those corresponding elections. To fix this issue, the proposed form would automatically recognize which races a student can vote in using the student’s Net ID.
Student Government must be held accountable for ensuring fair and just elections each year in order to avoid situations like mine. The best way to do this is by supporting Baker’s initiative to take ballot creation and distribution away from Student Affairs and keep it internal within SG.
Every candidate deserves to have their name on the ballot or Student Government elections will continue to be unrepresentative and uncreditable.