As the Supreme Court evaluates campaign finance reform this term, University students face an election reform of their own.
Following a series of controversies during last spring's Student Council elections, Council instigated a restructuring of the election process that will culminate with a student vote to take place November 11-12.
When they vote, students will face a series of referenda that will ask them to approve constitutional changes and the formation of a new organization to oversee elections called the University Board of Elections. If approved, the changes will fundamentally alter the way in which student self-governance is conducted.
The centerpiece of the reform movement is the creation of the election board, an independent body analogous to the Federal Election Commission.
The previous system, on the other hand, could be compared to a U.S. congressional committee conducting the national elections for all three branches of government.
Will Sowers, Council vice president for administration, said detaching Council from the elections helps to remove the stigma of favoritism and corruption that has permeated elections in the past.
"Having elections run separately from Council removes politics from the operation and insures impartiality from problems of the past," Sowers said.
General Concerns about the Old System
The problem-plagued spring election prompted University Vice President of Student Affairs Pat Lampkin's office to publish a 35-page report auditing the 2003 Student Council elections process. Council also was motivated to create the Elections Reform Ad Hoc Committee to investigate the controversies.
Student leaders and administrators have continued throughout the last eight months to analyze the many shortcomings of the system highlighted by last year's events.
The Elections Committee, for instance, never had the requisite number of members appointed to it, which Sowers said raised due process concerns about student self-governance and fair elections. Logistically, the small committee also had difficulty handling the workload and adhering to the election timeline.
Many of the election procedural rules also conflicted with some Council constitutional statutes. For instance, rules regulating CIO flyering and chalking are loosely enforced, while candidates in a campaign could be penalized either with a fine or a docking of votes.
The docking of votes for campaign violations was another one of the contributing factors in last year's controversy.
Generally, the chair of the Elections Committee did most of the work and made unilateral decisions regarding the enforcement of elections rules, including the docking of votes, Sowers said.
This unilateral decision making became an issue last year when the Elections Committee Chair Julie Teater consulted with Council executive officers regarding alleged campaign violations.
The administrative audit and the elections reform ad hoc committee have since suggested that Council executives not have such influence over the course of an election due to "conflicts of interest."
Allegations that people outside of the Elections Committee had access to the voting server also prompted the ad hoc committee to suggest an improved computer system to be administered by ITC.
The ad hoc committee since has drawn up a set of guidelines for the new elections board in order to avoid similar procedural problems in the future.
Council President Daisy Lundy said she is pleased with the outcome of the reform process.
"The implementation of the [elections board] will alleviate concerns about any lack of integrity during the elections process," she said.
Fourth-year Graduate Arts and Sciences student Gavin Reddick, who served on the Elections Reform Ad Hoc Committee, said the elections board is a much sounder system than the old.
"Between legal council and mechanisms to cover the most important things like impeachments and run-offs, the process is there so that if [the elections board] follows the process everything should be fine," Reddick said. "Obviously it will be up to the people involved to actually be fair and impartial."
Council Chief of Staff Noah Sullivan said he now supports the election board despite some reservations he had last spring that impartiality would be an issue regardless of who oversees elections.
"Any system where human beings are running elections is going to be imperfect in some way, but I think the [elections board] does the best to take care of the biases that will exist," Sullivan said.
Enduring Endorsements
With the heightened involvement of endorsing organizations in last spring's elections, many questions arose regarding the specific rules and regulations surrounding CIO participation.
Teater said in a Cavalier Daily article shortly after the campaign that the endorsement process needed reform to ensure fairness and efficiency.
"I think that the idea of endorsements is very positive because it gets people actively involved in campaigning, but it's very hard to control," Teater said.
Last year the Elections Committee warned or punished candidates based on the actions of endorsing organizations, which included illegal campaigning in first-year dorms, inappropriate flyering and chalking on University brick, under a doctrine of "implicit consent."
"Implicit consent was where the candidate was blamed for any campaign violations regardless of the candidate's knowledge or actions," Sowers said.
The ad hoc committee questioned to what extent to punish a candidate for the actions of an endorsing organization, wondering if candidates give "implicit consent" to those campaigning for them.
Sowers added that the ad hoc committee put together a "broad set of procedures and elections rules" which will be submitted to the new elections board for their approval. These guidelines suggest some solutions to the problem.
Runoff Reforms
Of all the events of last year's election, upperclassmen may best remember the premature end to the runoff because of the alleged attack on then-presidential-hopeful Lundy. Before the assault, however, there was a debate over whether the ill-fated runoff should even have occurred.
A constitutional ambiguity and the docking of 41 votes from Lundy because of campaign violations led some in Lundy's campaign to question the need for a run-off after Lundy received over 100 more votes than her opponent, Ed Hallen.
The administration audit noted that the vote docking was an "unusually strict compliance action that had little precedent" but also stated that the runoff was justified according to Council bylaws.
Reddick explained the new system called "Optional Preferential Alternate Vote," which will eliminate future election runoffs in close races.
If there were three people running for president, like there were last semester, students would rank them in preferential order. Studentsalso would have the option to not rank a candidate whom they did not like.
Under the old system, if the leading candidate won by less than 5 percent, a runoff would occur. But under the new system if the margin is that small, the computerized election system would effectively "dissolve" any votes that were for the third-place candidate and move down to a student's next choice, if he or she had one.
Turnout Considerations
While the introduction of the elections board has forced many student leaders to amend their organizational constitutions to recognize the new electing body, some school councils also have discovered turnout requirements that render their constitutions not conducive to change.
For instance, the Engineering School council's constitution requires for both two-thirds of the engineering students to turn-out as well as two-thirds to approve an amendment.
The E-school council has decided to loosely interpret their constitution so that if 50 percent of those voting approve the amendment as well as three-quarters of the E-school council, then the amendment will pass.
The fourth-year class council faced a similar difficulty with its own constitutional amendment turnout requirements. As a result, the fourth-year class will be asked to approve, via a referendum, an amendment that will lower the turnout requirement to 10 percent.
Sowers said University administrators and election reform advocates have addressed these tough-to-meet turnout rules with the school councils.
"Right now we've been able to interpret all the constitutions in such a way that turn-out concerns shouldn't be a problem," Sowers said. "However, turnout still remains an important issue."
Getting Out the Vote
The election will take place November 11-12 and will be run by an ad hoc elections committee operating under the old system's guidelines and procedures. Administrators and Council members do not anticipate any difficulties with the fall election though, because of the small number of candidates running.
Since only four College and one Engineering School representative positions are up for election, however, turn-out has become Council's primary concern.
Some students, such as those in the Commerce or Nursing schools,do not even have candidates to vote for, but only the election reform referenda on the ballot.
Lundy emphasized the importance of voting, even for students who are in schools that have no representatives to elect.
"Students have a responsibility to vote, particularly in this election because of the magnitude of this referendum," Lundy said.
Sowers said he is encouraging CIO presidents to endorse both candidates running in the fall as well as the referendum in order to increase turnout.
"We're going to have a pretty massive publicity campaign that will hopefully include all the groups that endorse the referendum," he said.
Although those involved chose not to speculate on what would happen if the referendum fails because of low turnout, technically the only recourse would be for University President John T. Casteen, III or the Board of Visitors to sign off on the constitutional changes.
The Board of Visitors does have ultimate authority over all student constitutions and therefore could bypass the need for all of these constitutional revisions and referenda, but both student leaders and administrators agreed the issue of student self-governance is too important to circumvent a vote by students.
Madelyn Wessel, special advisor to the vice president of student affairs, said the administration "hopes that students would turn out and make this important decision about student self-governance themselves."
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