The new Associated Students of ASU constitution passed Thursday - but less than 1 percent of Tempe campus students voted.
With the polls closing at 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday night, 457 students had cast their votes on ASU Interactive.
There are 51,234 students at the Tempe campus, according to the Office of Institutional Analysis.
About 81 percent voted to pass the constitution, the other 19 percent voted against it, said Alan Clifford, assistant director for elections.
In the Undergraduate Student Government presidential and vice presidential elections held every spring, the turnout is closer to 5,000 students, Clifford said.
"We weren't actually expecting the turnout to be this high," Clifford said. "Since this is just a referendum, there isn't as much marketing that goes into it."
After the online poll closed, the votes were checked to ensure that there were no duplicates or fraud, he said.
The new constitution will add another USG vice president starting in fall 2007. The Programming and Activities Board will also be removed from ASASU.
ASASU was formerly a three-branch organization, but now will consist of only USG and the Graduate and Professional Student Association. Each branch presented its own portion of the constitution at a constitutional convention last spring.
The USG portion of the constitution was rewritten following the convention. Originally, the USG portion called for a dual-presidency and was later changed to a dual-vice presidency, said Ross Meyer, USG president.
"The differences aren't catastrophic," Meyer said.
The revised USG portion was passed again by all of ASASU, Meyer added.
"It's like an extended convention," he said.
Matthew Thorpe, a nursing junior, said he didn't even know an election was held.
"I wish I knew about it - I would've voted on it," Thorpe said.
Meyer sent an e-mail to all students encouraging them to vote. But that e-mail never reached Thorpe.
"I keep fairly close attention to [USG]," Thorpe said. "They kept quiet about it. [And] some students don't even have e-mail access."
With the e-mail being sent out Tuesday morning and voting ending Wednesday night, there wasn't enough time to establish an opinion, Thorpe said.
"If you only get 48 hours, that's not going to give people enough time to read it," Thorpe said of the new 23-page constitution.
The timing of the election after Thanksgiving might have been a factor in the low turnout, said Neal Stephenson, PAB president.
"I'm not exactly sure if there's any golden answer to why students didn't vote," Stephenson said. "[But] it's one of those things that I think is a task for us to look for - ways to increase student vote and turnout."
Reach the reporter at: matthew.g.stone@asu.edu.
