Was it just me, or did anyone else find the recent student body presidential elections a travesty of the great American ideal of democratic election? Between illicit candidate voting booths, mass blitzes and an incredibly confusing election ballot, it was quite clear that the Election Planning and Advisory Committee had little to no control over this year's campaign season. Furthermore, many of the election rules in place, including senior enfranchisement, inhibit the student body's ability to elect a candidate who will serve their needs in the coming year.
Every EPAC rule seems to be in place for a reason. Candidates cannot chalk the sides of buildings because the chalk won't wash off a building as easily as it will the sidewalk; they can't send out mass blitzes, because nobody likes an inbox full of junk mail; candidates can only spend $150 on their campaign, so that a candidate's socioeconomic background won't win him or her the election.
As an attendee of the campaign strategy meetings of both Frances Vernon '10 and Boyd Lever '10, let me assure you that the candidates' emphasis was on circumventing these rules, not on following them. Debating over how to make a giant poster out of little posters (EPAC has a rule on how big campaign posters can be), and discussing how to funnel money through other organizations, so as to technically only spend the $150, both candidates were well aware that the rules were merely obstacles that needed to be circumnavigated.
But how can you blame them? When EPAC's enforcing power consists of issuing warnings or eliminating candidates altogether from the ballot, candidates would be politically naive if they didn't breach EPAC rules. Candidates realize that getting removed from the ballot by EPAC for sending out a mass blitz, or for writing on Thayer's door, would cause a tremendous campus uproar, while receiving a handful of EPAC warnings would have no bearing on the election whatsoever.
What EPAC needs to establish, then, is a middle-ground measure to enforce its rules. What I'm imagining is a type of vote-penalizing punishment or a pecuniary fine that would deduct from the candidates' election spending cap.
As for the election web site, I'm not sure the ballot itself could have been made any more unclear. Even if people weren't celebrating April 20, navigating the election web site was difficult at best and impossible at worst. I felt like one of those white-haired ladies in Volusia County while I was trying to figure out why I was ranking candidates on a scale of one to three. Most of my canvassing on election day was spent walking students through the voting process.
Lastly, if Assembly elections are to be representative of next year's student body, the senior class must be disenfranchised. Not only are seniors apathetic about the student body presidential race, but they are also not held accountable for their votes. Seniors have no incentive to learn the candidates' policies: they will be long-gone alumni before the next year's Student Assembly's policies take effect. Their votes are often uninformed, and are not representative of the constituents that the Assembly president will eventually serve. While the idea behind senior enfranchisement seems to be buried in the truism, "seniors know best," our upper(most)classmen too frequently vote blindly based on inconsequential or superficial factors.
By reforming EPAC's regulations, and by improving its methods of discipline and reprimand, we can restore integrity to Student Assembly elections. While Vernon's victory this year was decisive, and thus did not call into question the strength of the voting process itself, the less-than-bulletproof system could cause problems in the future.
The burden falls upon current EPAC members, along with anyone else involved in Student Assembly elections, to take the lessons learned from this year's mistakes and use them to work toward future successes.
