Thirty-three pages, 12 articles, and 42 sections.
Last week, the Eagle published an editorial talking about the red tape that seems to consume Student Government elections.
Two years ago, SG went through its most intense election cycle: a candidate was removed from the ballot and the Undergraduate Senate seriously considered decertifying the entire election.
Today, our elections are a minefield and navigating the rules has become more strategic than actually reaching out to students.
It’s time we make elections what the student body deserves: open and fair to all students, inside and outside SG.
That’s why this weekend, we introduced the most sweeping and comprehensive election reform in recent memory. Through the Committee for the Review of Elections Policy and Enforcement, we’ve gone through — word-by-word — to ensure that election policy is no longer a barrier to entry.
It’s easy to say that the Board of Elections should have barely any regulatory power, but that puts us back to square one, two years ago.
Our task is to find the delicate balance between safeguarding students from overzealous candidates and giving them the freedom to campaign without the minefield.
We have almost cut the regulations in half. We’ve made rules simpler, we’ve combined clauses and we’ve reorganized. We’ve spent hours discussing and debating. We’ve made the rules more accessible to campaign staff, and we’ve made the rules for adjudication of disputes more specific.
For the first time ever, election policy will explicitly specify how violations of election policy are handled.
The rules should be based on one thing, and one thing only: common sense. But they should also be accessible to anyone who wants to run.
Joe Wisniewski
Senator for the Campus At-Large
Joe Ste.Marie
Parliamentarian of the AUSG
