News
SGA election on hold; candidates break procedure
The Pointer
ajuhn217@uwsp.edu
The Student Government Association presidential and vice presidential election has been delayed until the week after spring break, due to technical issues.
Students received the original election ballot link via e-mail Friday, March 6. Many students had issues accessing the link.
“The elections committee wants the most fair solution to the technical difficulties we’ve been having,” said Holly Ehrhardt, co-chair of the SGA elections committee. “The main problems have been with students not being able to sign in, senators not being sorted into their college and write-in votes being non-existent.”
This will create some problems with a recent decision to discipline the Newton/Krumsee team made by the SGA election committee last Thursday, due to a violation of SGA constitutional election guidelines last week.
“As of 12:01 a.m. on March 12, SGA will formally remove all sponsorship from the Newton/ Krumsee campaign,” said the election committee statement.
Posters, handbills, concourse banners, tabling and any other form of campaigning sponsored by SGA must cease for the Newton/Krumsee team. If sponsored by a different student organization, they may continue campaigning in this manner.
The intent of the ruling by the elections committee was to penalize the team for one day, but now the elections are being extended until after break, leading the punishment to be much more extensive. The elections committee will be meeting Thursday, March 12 to discuss this punishment in light of the delay in the election.
The team received punishment because of an unauthorized mass e-mail sent to a large amount of student organization leaders. Each team is allowed one e-mail to all student organization presidents, which is to be approved before sending by the SGA advisor, Laura Ketchum-Ciftci.
The committee also asked the team about online campaign habits within the SGA office.
“The only time I have personally used SGA computers is to check my e-mail. I didn’t use anything to print on SGA computers. We have not used SGA resources for the purposes of our campaign, with the exception of the $75 that we’ve been allocated. We have not had anything in the office discussing the campaign,” said Newton.
Nominees are not allowed to use the SGA office for any business pertaining to the campaign whatsoever. This includes going on Facebook election pages, holding meetings, wearing a party's button or even talking about the campaign in the SGA office.
“We were really caught off-guard by this because we have been very careful, as careful as we can reasonably be expected to be,” said Newton.
The team admitted to making mistakes but also feels targeted by the elections committee.
“The purpose of the elections committee is to ensure that there is a fair campaign and a fair election on this campus and that’s not what’s taking place here,” said Newton.
The Asbach/Schultz campaign has had a poster taken down from the main Dreyfus University Center posting board as it exceeded the size limit for posters.
SGA plans to prevent problems in future years by creating procedures for elections to ensure smoother transitions.
“Another problem with elections is that there is no institutional memory with the elections committee,” said Ehrhardt. “We’re going to create an election manual so that the same procedures get followed in future years.”
New election ballots will be e-mailed to students after spring break.
