BoE on track for upcoming election - Guest Column

BoE on track for upcoming election - Guest Column

By Michael Seibert · The Johns Hopkins News-Letter · October 7, 2004

In last week's News-Letter additional solutions were proposed to fix the election process here on the Homewood Campus. Critics of the Board of Elections are correct about one thing: last year's problems must not happen again.

However, the proposed reforms are either completely unfeasible to implement or fail to address the root issues that plagued the presidential elections. At worst, they show a lack of knowledge of the rules and procedures that govern StuCo elections.

The JHU chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union insists that elections must be properly advertised. But what exactly does that amount to?

The Board of Elections (BoE) does not have the ability to e-mail the student body directly and must therefore rely on StuCo to send out election notices.

Several information sessions are held prior to each election, large banners are hung at various locations on campus, including the Mattin Center and Levering Hall. Candidate statements are printed in the News-Letter, and campaign flyers dotted every bulletin board on campus. How much more does the JHU-ACLU need?

An assertion from Morgan Macdonald's Op-Ed column last week states that, "...candidates should not be disqualified for trivial reasons ... candidate X should not be disqualified when, unbeknownst to him, his friend posts a nasty comment about candidate Y on the Daily Jolt..."

It is true that BoE election rules prohibit spamming of message boards and e-mail lists, however these offenses do not result in automatic disqualifications.

In fact, despite numerous vicious and personal attacks posted on the Daily Jolt against several candidates during last year's election, no candidate was disqualified based on these criteria. In fact, a candidate has never been disqualified for a posting on an online forum.

Candidates are certainly disqualified when they personally and purposefully spread false allegations about other candidates.

While candidates are allowed to dispute each other's platforms and previous performance, slanderous speech or personal attacks are prohibited and under BoE rules are grounds for immediate disqualification and referral to the school's judicial board for additional review.

A system of major and minor violations for candidates has been proposed charging that good candidates are lost "due to disqualification for use of too many posters, postering in restricted areas, campaigning outside of the designated campaign time and many other minor infractions."

However, "major" and "minor" infractions are vague terms that would encourage rules violations.

If a candidate knows that a certain infraction will result in only a warning, then why not do it? Campaign rule do not call for automatic disqualifications for any of the aforementioned campaign violations. However, repeated violations of these, and other rules, are grounds for disqualification.

The goal of the guidelines for the student elections is to insure a uniform and fair process that gives all candidates the ability to successfully campaign and to participate in student government.

As for the suggestions that candidates be fined for campaign violations, this has been investigated. Doing so would be discriminatory against some candidates and enforcing these fines would be difficult at best, illegal at worst.

It has long been charged that the campaign postering rules are too restrictive. While possibly correct, as the BoE has explained countless times in the past, it is the Johns Hopkins University which writes the policies concerning postering, not the Board of Elections. The BoE is simply charged with enforcing these and other University rules.

Additionally, it should be pointed out that campaign rules are clearly explained to all candidates before an election even takes place, and that all candidates are given a copy of the rules and are asked if they understand the rules in question.

Candidates have ample opportunity to ask questions concerning the elections rules and procedures. In fact, candidates are encouraged to ask questions about practices that could be questionable or are not covered under election guidelines in order reduce the possibility for a candidate to face punitive measures for any reason.

Moreover, it must be clarified that campaign rules equally apply to all candidates, and no candidate should be allowed to violate a rule and get away with it, as this would be penalizing those candidates who rightly decided to abide by the rules.

Finally, suggestions are proposed for the creation of a larger appeals panel than the one currently established. Unfortunately, this suggestion fails to state what is the difficulty facing the current appeals panel.

All efforts are made to insure that the panel, which is under the direct control of Jeff Groden-Thomas, the Director of Student Involvement and the University official that directly deals with Student Council, is unbiased.

Replacing this with a 10 member board selected by the very StuCo officers that it would be regulating would eliminate any sense of impartiality that the current panel has.

Why even have a BoE at all if there's going to be a review board with more members than the BoE itself?

We must strive to streamline election procedures, not add layers upon layers of bureaucracy. Concerns and comments regarding the election process are appreciated; however, it would seem that many are more interested in criticizing the BoE than helping to solve the quandaries facing StuCo and the BoE. For example, the JHU-ACLU has been invited to assist in publicizing elections on campus, but seems uninterested in doing so.

Moreover, the JHU-ACLU claims that it is committed to improving the electoral process; however, at no point since last spring has the JHU-ACLU contacted the BoE with any suggestions as to how these improvements are to be achieved.

As a final point we would like to encourage everyone to vote in the upcoming elections, both the presidential and the freshman class elections. If you have any questions or comments, please contact the BoE at BoE@jhu.edu

-- Michael Seibert is a senior Biomedical Engineering major.