Last year, I found myself skimming the Student Association Constitution and its various amendments for some organization business.
I forgot almost all of it except the parts I was interested in, but seeing the article in The Reflector on Tuesday about the proposed campaigning changes reminded me of something I noticed about the current election rules. Title 400, Chapter 402.4 D states, “On Election Day, campaigning shall not be allowed within twenty-five (25) feet of the building of any polling place.” A quick jot down to 402.9 A reveals that a polling station is defined as “any computer lab on campus” or “one or more computers organized for the purpose of voting on or off campus”.
Now that the SA has converted the entire process to an online system available through myState, I think that these rules become difficult to interpret.
As any student’s laptop is now capable of being a computer used for the purposes of voting, does this mean that your computer creates an invisible 25-foot radius around you, which press-ganged pledges on the Drill Field must flee from or become the subject of a campaigning violation? An extreme example, but amusing nonetheless, and I certainly would not mind getting across the Drill Field without being harassed by competing swarms of Comfort-color-coded freshmen during Homecoming voting.
Regardless of whether or not we’ll be able to use our laptops as shields come October, I think this example helps outline some of the issues with the current election code.
Hopefully, Wynn will succeed in his goal of making the elections process much more sane and respectable, making this a moot point.
But should we all have to endure one more Homecoming election cycle under the old status quo, we might as well make it interesting and see if the above statutes are worth anything.