The Board of Elections (BoE) will hold campus-wide elections for the Student Council (StuCo) Executive Board online this Sunday and Monday. Just redrafted into the StuCo bylaws on Tuesday, the BoE faces continuing student concern about the legitimacy of changing campaign policies and running elections while they are still without official regulatory bylaws.
For the current Executive Board elections, the BoE determined earlier this semester to increase the campaign spending limit to $500 per candidate. The former spending limit was $100. BoE Chairperson Rick Aseltine did not specify why the limit was made $500 but said that spending limits were completely removed during the September freshman elections in order to "gauge how much students would spend on an election."
Eric Wolkoff, presidential candidate and a former BoE member who resigned after the freshman elections so that he could participate in StuCo elections this month, said that the change is consistent with earlier BoE initiatives to increase voter turnout. In response to concerns that he was involved in the campaign changes, he said that he left the BoE before the change was instituted.
The BoE, like StuCo, had been permitted to exist provisionally under the oversight of advisor Jeff Groden-Thomas. Although StuCo passed its bylaws at its meeting Tuesday, the BoE is responsible for its own The BoE, like StuCo, had been permitted to exist provisionally under the oversight of advisor Jeff Groden-Thomas. Although StuCo passed their bylaws at their meeting Tuesday, the BoE is responsible for creating its own bylaws and "will look into updating its bylaws after this election," according to Aseltine.
However, with the recent change in campaign spending, the campus chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has intensified an ongoing protest of BoE election policies.
Without bylaws, "it makes the [election] process pretty suspect. There's no transparency at all. That's really the concern that the ACLU is working on," said co-President Morgan MacDonald. Members, angered by what they called non-transparent election policies, are concerned that the BoE began elections this year before being rewritten into StuCo bylaws and continue to proceed without BoE bylaws, which were negated with the referendum in December. They said that BoE publicity has been poor, noting the same-day notification of candidate petition deadlines in December and the posting of Wolkoff's candidate posters the day before an official email was sent to candidates announcing poster-signing dates.
The club has "serious concerns that there's no accountability for the BoE," said ACLU co-President Blake Trettien, adding that BoE policies are too internalized and without oversight. Members, who began requesting copies of the old BoE bylaws two weeks ago, said that the BoE would not assent. MacDonald said that on Tuesday Groden-Thomas, "was surprised that [the bylaws] weren't online like they were supposed to be." StuCo President Charles Reyner finally emailed the old BoE bylaws to them on Wednesday.
Aseltine said that "the ACLU is free to set up a meeting with BoE to discuss its concerns."
The ACLU plans to draft sample bylaws where they encourage the BoE to make the election process more transparent and to improve publicity on campus. As of deadline, the BoE had still not announced the official time for the candidate debate on its Web site.
