Students disconcerted by the Student Council elections process will have an opportunity to change the procedure by which student governors are elected in the upcoming elections.
On Nov. 11-12 the student body will elect four new representatives from the College and one from the Engineering school.
Candidates currently are approaching deadlines for entering the race -- petitions are due by Nov. 1.
According to third-year Council Rep. Ruthie Yow, fall elections are critical because they are issue-focused and less affected by the publicity of officer elections in the spring elections.
"When I ran last year, I felt like [the candidates] were people who were getting out into governance because they wanted to do specific things," she said.
In addition to the candidates for representatives, this year's ballot will include a referendum of proposed changes for Council's electoral procedures.
The main proposal concerns the creation of a University Elections Board, independent of Council, which would administrate future elections.
First used during this year's Spring elections, the elections board would be composed of students selected by a committee including the University Honor Committee chair, University Judiciary Committee chair, Council president and Fourth-year Trustees president.
In the future, the previous year's election board also would sit on the selection committee. A non-binding list of nominees, drafted by the 10 student presidents of each school in the University, would be sent to the selection committee, and nominees could not be involved with any of the organizations composing the selection committee.
"We want the entity to focus on running a non-partisan, non-biased election rather than have to worry about being elected themselves," said Will Sowers, Council vice-president for administration.
Yow reinforced the urgency of the elections board.
"There are lots of machinations to make sure that the body is independent from Council," Yow said, adding that an independent election administration body could have prevented the allegations of impropriety that saturated last spring's election.
Also included in the referendum are proposed changes for election rule-enforcement. Essentially, Sowers said, the proposed changes would separate the role of a prosecutor from that of a judge by delegating to the elections board the responsibility of determining who is violating rules, and to UJC and Honor that of trying the accused candidates.
Council already has passed a recommendation for a newer and more secure election computer system which ITC currently is working on. Additionally, Council members have recommended reforms in endorsements and runoff procedures. If the referendum is passed, the elections board would determine whether these changes are made.
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