A most unfortunate event has occurred this semester. Six of the nine Undergraduate Student Senator positions are uncontested.

Democracy is founded around the idea that given enough options and the freedom to vote on those options, the best person or issue will win. This year’s USS election still has all the freedom, but lacks the options.

Making the process worse is that there is only one candidate who has a competitor and has received a full endorsement from this newspaper — Andrew Meeks. Almost every other position is either uncontested, with no or hesitant endorsements, or contested by shaky, nearly unqualified candidates. For the position of University Affairs, our final decision was made by a coin flip.

The students of Kent State must understand that these senators are paid for by every student (in the form of a tuition waiver) and represent and affect every student.

Each year, allocations is given hundreds of thousands of dollars of student money to allocate to different student groups. The person in charge of this decision process is the Senator for Business and Finance, which, like most of the positions, is uncontested. In the midst of future conflict about money matters, students will forget that they didn’t care enough to run themselves.

The USS will undoubtedly have problems in the coming year; this is inevitable. But the problems that arise and how they’ll be handled will be much different — and not for the better — because there is less competition tomorrow and Wednesday.

Please still go vote, but know that the conditions in which you must exercise your democracy is lamentable.

The above editorial is the consensus opinion of the Daily Kent Stater editorial board.