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The players came to the game ready to rumble on Oct. 28. Well-rested and properly practiced, student body presidential candidates Chris Knoblock and Nelson Carson, along with vice presidential hopefuls Ryan Gavin and Anthony Ortiz, knew the contest for the University of Maine student elections would be fierce.
After polls closed, Knoblock and Ortiz were named victorious.
The job of the Fair Elections and Practices Committee is as straightforward as the lines on a referee’s uniform — to prepare the arena and supervise the match in its entirety to ensure a fair result. But for the second year in a row, that FEPC failed to fulfill their expectations.
Vice presidential runner-up Gavin alleged in an article in The Maine Campus (“Knoblock, Ortiz elected as new SG executives, A1”) that he fielded more than 160 complaints from individuals unable to access the FirstClass voting boxes, which were supposed to be made available on every student’s desktop that day.
Littered throughout voting proceedings for the 2010 student body campaigns were several other fallacies which inevitably tripped up not only the candidates, but student voters as well. A delay at the start of the voting process, lasting approximately 40 minutes due to technical issues, initiated election day poorly, but the substandard quality of the affair began long before 9:00 Thursday.
Due to this and the fact that an e-mail detailing the election process, which was supposed to be delivered to every student’s inbox by current Student Body President Brian Harris, was directed to the voting folder only, the inefficiencies of the process have become blatantly apparent.
Not only were some students unable to vote online, but many were not even informed that day of where to cast their votes in person. For the candidates who dedicated a sufficient amount of time and took the process seriously, the FEPC’s continued floundering is unacceptable.
But how do we go about correcting such a faulted system? Basic mechanics would have us go to the heart of the machine. In the case of the FEPC, the core of the problem lies with chairwoman Skye Landry and if she remains, it’s not outlandish to assume that election inaccuracies would continue to flood the court like debris from unruly spectators.
Last year’s election, with Landry at the helm, went almost as badly. According to a Nov. 2009 article in The Maine Campus, Landry and another FEPC member said six particular votes in the presidential election “were likely not from eligible student voters, but neither said they were positive.” Harris went on to beat runner-up Zachary Jackman by a mere five votes.
Dropping the ball once is excusable, but if it is done on every occasion, you’re going to get cut. Landry is unreliable and her contribution to the student government team is practically nonexistent, which warrants her nothing more than an outright release.
In theory, the FEPC is a good idea, but under Landry’s reign it fails to get the plays down. Starting anew with fresh leadership is the only feasible route to follow if the hardworking campaigners and voters of UMaine are to be rewarded.
