Opinion

A bah humbug on elections

FEPC complaints could ruin, sway voting process

By Matt Williams

Posted on Dec. 11, 2006, at 12:00 a.m.

There’s going to be another voting icon on your FirstClass desktop today. This time, it’s different, and you really should use the thing.

For those of you who missed Thursday’s fine edition of The Maine Campus, Student Government Inc. president-elect Priyanth Chandrasekar’s landslide victory is being contested because of fair election rules violations.

Fair election transgressions – that phrase sounds pretty serious, right? Chandrasekar was found guilty of putting campaign posters too close to polling places and posting on FirstClass on the day of the election. Guilty is a harsh word to put next to something about posters and spam, but I’m not here to criticize the FEPC, which handled the situation as well as could have.

Students will decide if Chandrasekar’s violations are serious enough to warrant disqualification in the vote tomorrow. That’s a fine idea by an FEPC that was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

What won’t be fine is if one less person votes on this question than voted in the general election. Let’s be honest, the general student population simply doesn’t care about most voting icons that appear on their desktops. More people care about executive offices, and 1,705 students cast a vote for the presidency.

Chandrasekar won by an overwhelming margin, so this vote should be a no-contest. If the 784 people who voted for Derek Mitchell, Kevin Ballew and write-ins combine to reject the election, while Chandrasekar’s camp votes 917 times to uphold it, he still wins handily.

It’s not a slam-dunk because you can’t depend on a full turnout. Students get tired of voting icons appearing 100 times a semester, and some might ignore it. If they supported Chandrasekar the first time around, he’ll have coal in his stocking a few weeks early.

Another absurd facet to this mess is Mitchell’s withdrawal. As a result, a vote against Chandrasekar is a vote for chaos, as even senate procedural czar Aaron Sterling isn’t quite sure what would ensue in the aftermath of a run-off election.

Mitchell cannot withdraw from the election, so if he were to win, he’d resign and leave the office to either Aaron Sterling or vice president-elect Bill Pomerleau – depending on the orders of the oaths of office. No one knows if either would accept the role or pass it to someone of their choosing a la last year’s Sterling-Adam Kirland switcharoo. On top of that, no one knows if Ballew would accept the job or follow Mitchell’s lead.

That confusing mouthful leaves voters with a quagmire. Let’s say a voter believes Chandrasekar broke the rules but finds it irresponsible to elect someone who finished with such a distant third? How is he to vote? The UMaine community shouldn’t be faced with such an ambiguous choice.

A rule is a rule, but the spirit of these regulations is questionable at best. The felonious poster was placed outside a computer cluster, a polling place in an online election. But what if I had FirstClass uploaded on my PDA-cell phone or laptop? Is anywhere I plug in considered a polling place and subject to the no-campaign-poster rule? Ridiculous, perhaps, but in the time-honored Student Government Inc. tradition of crossing T’s and dotting I’s, it begs asking.

This reeks of the technicality police. Two students who are “in the know” – one a member of Student Government Inc. and both members of the Mitchell-Pomerleau campaign group on Facebook – brought the complaint.

People who aren’t “in the know” seemingly decided this election by voting for Chandrasekar, an outsider with some fresh breath and new ideas poo-pood as “unrealistic” by some Student Government Inc. members. Now there’s a chance a guy who won in a landslide of Teddy Roosevelt proportions may be disqualified.

So, I’m begging you, vote. Maybe you disagree with me and vehemently condemn Chandrasekar’s violations. Fine. But vote on it. If the people “in the know” are the only ones who vote in this election, then the bigwigs have won again and Student Government Inc. will lose even more luster with a disenchanted student body. The only way to make this election legitimate is to make sure at least 1,705 votes are cast. Let’s make it happen.

Matt Williams will make sure Santa Claus skips your house if you don’t vote on this issue.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 11th, 2006, 12:00 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.