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From nominations to inauguration, the Fair Elections Practices Commission will be working behind the scenes of the student body presidential election to make sure everything runs smoothly.
Starting around Nov. 5, the committee will post flyers to remind students where to get nomination paperwork, when nominations must be in and when the election will take place. Alana Brown is in charge of publicity.
Nelson Carson is the new inaugural director. He is responsible for running the inauguration ceremony which takes place a week after the election is finalized.
The committee’s busiest time is the three months or so before the elections. The commission recently took on two new members, Carson and Carrie-Anne Young, to help with the extra workload that comes at election time.
Spring is quieter. Though clubs can use the FEPC to oversee their elections, few do. Chair Jonathan Charette explained, “If they go through us, they have to follow our guidelines.” Most clubs handle their own elections so they can follow their own rules.
The General Student Senate does not have that option. Before campaigning begins, Charette meets with each of the candidates to go over the rules.
“That’s really important, actually meeting with the candidates and making sure they know that there are strict guidelines they have to follow,” Charette said. He also sets the timetable for how the election process will run.
Once candidates know the rules, the commission makes sure they follow them. When complaints arise about the conduct of the candidates or the general election process, the commission runs the hearings. The six-member commission reviews the complaint and decides what action to take to fix the problem.
Charette and vice chair Christopher Whitcomb view the committee as a check on the senate. “It’s actually a pretty important part of the democratic process on campus,” Charette said.
Whitcomb added, “It’s nice to know someone besides the people running [for office] are running things.”
The check works both ways. The senate can review complaints against the commission. Members who do not follow the guidelines or who do not fulfill their duties can be removed from the commission by either the senate or the chair. However, as far as Whitcomb knows, no one has ever been removed from the commission.
Last year, the commission had to take a hard look at its rules. The big debate was over campaign posters. Priyanth Chandrasekar’s campaign was accused of putting up campaign posters in polling places within 24 hours of an election. The official guidelines of the FEPC prohibited that kind of advertising. When the commission looked at the guidelines they found a lot of ambiguity. The term “polling places” was so loosely defined that nobody knew whether putting up posters outside a computer cluster violated that rule.
The commission ruled that it did not. The Wade Center, where students can vote using a paper ballot, is the only official polling place. The computer clusters did not count.
“It didn’t change anything we did, but it made us go back and look at the things that were causing problems,” Whitcomb said.
The commission reinterpreted most of their guidelines. “We got rid of a lot of the vagueness of it.” They hope this year’s election will run smoother as a result.
The process to add or change part of the FEPC official guidelines is simple. The commission calls a meeting to discuss the alteration. They then re-write it. The members are good at reaching a consensus. “We’ve never not had a unanimous vote.” Whitcomb said. After the commission agrees, the rule is sent to the senate to be ratified.
According to FEPC guidelines, no more than one member of the commission can be a senator. Right now Brandon Hart is filling that seat. The others are students nominated either by members of the senate or by acting commission members.
Aside from the student body presidential elections, the commission also oversees Student Government’s constitutional amendments and referendums. It approves all questions and descriptions to make sure they are worded fairly and can be easily understood. Once both have been approved, the commission passes them on to Colleen Ouellette, FirstClass administrator. She posts the icon to the desktops of all students eligible to vote.
