Punishing the candidates who ran a clean campaign

Punishing the candidates who ran a clean campaign

By NATHAN LEVIN · The Johns Hopkins News-Letter · April 23, 2008

To put it simply, I'm disappointed by recent developments that have taken place in the student council elections on account of decisions by the appeals committee and by Student Council.

First of all, the decision made by the Appeals Committee to disqualify all candidates running for executive Council positions was rash and overly aggressive. I think the Appeals Committee wrongly chose to ignore the decision made by the Committee on Student Elections (CSE), which only voted to disqualify five of the nine candidates. The CSE was created for a reason ?- to run and monitor elections as a disinterested body?? - and I think that we should leave more discretion up to them to perform their function. They are the ones setting rules and have been following the election process with the utmost scrutiny. It doesn't make sense that their decision can be so easily overturned by three people on the Appeals board, who only met for one afternoon (and one of whom sits as the president of Council).

It was also a poor decision to push back the executive elections. From a principled point of view, I don't think it's appropriate to hold new elections two weeks later that disregard all campaign violations that were made in the first. The fact is that those violations (such as mass e-mails asking for fraternity brothers to vote for a candidate) will still have influence on this new election, giving the candidates who violated campaign policy an unfair advantage in this upcoming election. Those candidates who ran a clean campaign are at a disadvantage for following the rules. Still the Appeals Committee is clearly bent on redoing the executive elections. To compensate for the disadvantaged candidates the Appeals Committee should institute vote penalties in the upcoming elections to reprimand the candidates who failed to play fair.

Furthermore, the decisions of the Appeals Committee forced the CSE to postpone the timing of class elections without asking for the opinion of or input from anyone involved in the class elections. It appears as if the class elections were shoved off to the side for no good reason. If we want to talk about increasing voter turnout on campus, it is not a wise tactic to tell the student body for a month that elections will be on a certain day and then suddenly postpone them the day before the set date.

From the view of an incumbent in the sophomore class presidential election, it is not fair for parties like myself to be affected by the errors of individuals in the executive elections. The postponement of the class elections meant that my time scheme, which included distributing flyers a couple of days before voting, hanging posters with a printed expiration date of this last Monday and telling people to vote last Friday, was nullified. I did not have the time or the money to reprint flyers and mailers to redistribute a week later, and I suspect that most others who took their campaign seriously didn't either. However, candidates who were lazy and didn't campaign as much previously got an extra chance.

The last upsetting development in the election process occurred on Tuesday night, when Student Council chose to table the motion to disregard senior votes in the executive election process. This decision in effect enforces the mandate by the Appeals Committee that states, "Senior Votes do count in Executive Board elections." In a democratic institution such as Student Council, it doesn't make the least bit of sense to include votes from a group of people who will not be affected by their decision, since the seniors will no longer be present when the new candidates are to serve their term. By nature, disinterested parties should not have voting power. In U.S. government elections we certainly don't see residents of Maine voting for senatorial candidates in California.

It is a shame that this year's election process turned out as it did, especially after the CSE spent so much time this past year on restructuring campaign rules and guidelines to avoid these types of incidents. I am only sorry for this year's candidates that these changes were so quickly overruled by the wave of a hand from the Appeals Committee. I say let's allow the CSE to do its job. When it comes to elections, more trust and authority should be given to the CSE, and the Appeals Committee should not be able to so easily disregard their decisions. As is exemplified in this situation, intervention from Student Council and the Appeals Committee in the election process has only made matters worse.