Election reform efforts welcome
THE SUGGESTIONS MADE last week by Associated Students election commissioner Deborah Napoleon are certainly a step towards fixing many of the problems inherent in the present rules and bylaws.
Napoleon included the suggested changes in her final report on April’s AS elections.
After stating that the election code needs to be “revamped,” Napoleon suggested a number of changes, including an extension of the “official campaign period” during which candidates are allowed to present their respective platforms to voters.
Napoleon told the AS Senators present that extending the period of the campaign from two weeks to 30 days might help increase voter turnout at the polls, which generally does not exceed 10 percent of those eligible.
Extending the campaign period seems like a reasonable suggestion that could be expected to increase student awareness about the campaign and its issues.
Furthermore, Napoleon suggested that the election code be revised to include regulations on Internet campaigning, which the Election Commission opted to no longer regulate following the disqualification of possible presidential candidate Ryan Caglia for placing statements on several Web pages that were deemed to be violations of the code.
This too is a reasonable suggestion, and it is critical that the Senate and the appropriate committees write Internet campaign regulations that are reasonable and easy to enforce — or opt to not monitor Web campaigning at all.
Though these proposals are a step in the right direction, there are still important issues that must be addressed as well.
In late May, an article in The Collegian about the upcoming campaign included interviews with two prospective candidates.
Questions were raised about whether this news article in itself was a violation of campaign rules because it was published before the start of the formal campaign period.
The two candidates quoted in the article could have possibly faced sanctions for their decision to inform the media, and therefore the public, that they were considering seeking higher office.
The AS Senate, in rewriting its election code, should consider creating an exemption for potential candidates who talk to the press in the course of news coverage.
The job of the media is to keep the public informed and this cannot be accomplished without on-the-record sources.
If talking to the press outside the “formal campaign period” can be considered a violation of the rules that carries a penalty, it is conceivable that anyone who talks to the media about any issues could be penalized in a future campaign if it were argued that they were somehow “campaigning” simply by having their name in print.
This is not to say that those currently in charge would seek to muzzle AS officials by taking such a step. Yet the rules must be written so that both the public’s right to know and AS officials themselves are protected from potential abuses of policy.
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