In two weeks, students will vote for the next IU Student Association executive ticket and congress. In the past year, the IUSA Election Commission has worked to revise its bylaws and procedural election code to make them understandable to students who want to get into student government.
In the last two elections, a series of code violations and technical disputes resulted in IUSA’s Supreme Court having a final say on the outcomes. Election Commissioner and junior Eric Langowski said the most significant changes to the election code and bylaws pertain to the Election Commission’s system of checks and balances, which is why the commission now has a law student supervising it.
Here’s a look back at past violations, ways tickets can receive reductions to their vote count and some ways a ticket can be outright disqualified.
Past elections
In the 2015 IUSA Election, the three tickets in the running shared 17 complaints alleging some sort of rule breaking. Initially, the only outcome was percent reductions in each ticket’s vote count. Soon it was revealed the winning ticket, Amplify for IUSA, committed campaign finance violations for not reporting non-monetary donations. The donations in question were free t-shirts and the use of a pony for campaign purposes.
Amplify had already received an 11.5 percent vote reduction, but following revelations to the election commission, it was disqualified. After appealing the decision to the IUSA Supreme Court, the disqualification was upheld and the second place INTouch ticket was elected.
In 2016, the REAL for IUSA ticket, which makes up much of the current administration, was given a 21.4 percent reduction in votes. This was upheld by the Supreme Court. REAL violated voter rules prohibiting the distribution of voting links by third-party emails. IU College Democrats emailed this link to students, and the election commission decided there was enough evidence to suggest collusion between the group and REAL.
Despite the lost votes and complaints by an opposing ticket, REAL was not disqualified.
The current situation
The current Procedural Election Code, approved by the IUSA Congress on Feb. 21, has a series of changes. Among them are decreases in campaign spending limits, increases in vote deduction penalties and a higher evidentiary standard for disqualification.
Langowski said the current Election Commission’s main job is to keep track of the election code, not to pass subjective decisions. The only violation the commission is actively looking for is campaigning in non-designated places, since tickets have to apply and be assigned these locations, he said.
Infractions detailed in titles IV, V and VI of the revised election code lay out some ways tickets can lose votes. Base percentage vote reductions have not had significant sway on the outcome of recent IUSA elections, but a six-ticket election means a wider dispersion of votes. A ticket with more votes has less to lose from a two-percent decrease than a ticket with very few votes.
Langowski said the evidentiary standard, defined in Section 601 of the election code, is significantly higher this year, which means if a ticket wants to file a complaint to disqualify another campaign, there has to be concrete proof. He said since the standards are more strict, the penalties will be equally severe.
Campaigning in the restricted areas defined in the code could lead to a base deduction of five percent. Campaigning in an establishment where patrons must be older than 21 years old is also prohibited. Interference with other campaigns’ materials would lose a ticket or candidate 2 percent, while any deliberate act to cause another ticket to violate the election code would result in a vote deduction twice the size of the violation they caused the other ticket to commit.
Using the IUSA office for campaign purposes could lose a ticket or candidate five percent. Improper use of emails, a hot topic in last year’s election, would result in a base deduction of a half percent per email sent.
Voter fraud, one of the more controversial infractions, is defined as any voter intimidation, vote manipulation or provision of voting technology in person. Campaigns may not hand out goods valued at more than $1 in exchange for votes, nor can they pressure someone to vote for a specific candidate. Violating any of these rules could lead to disqualification or vote loss for any ticket or candidate on whose behalf these infractions were committed.
Campaigns are now prohibited from receiving more than $500 from each of their executive candidates. Congressional candidates on the same ballot may not contribute more than $250. Anybody not on a ballot or affiliated with the campaign may not contribute more than $100 in a single IUSA election. Tickets cannot spend more than $3,000 and their expenditures cannot exceed contributions. The intermediate financial statement is due Friday at 11:59 p.m. for this election cycle, unless tickets request a short extension prior to this deadline. The final statement is due after the election.
Any combination of these violations, which don’t include bylaw technicalities, could result in a lost election and inevitable IUSA Supreme Court battle. In addition to this, Langowski said the commission cannot write themselves complaints, so an outside party must be the one to detect violations. He said this is because alleging a rule break by any ticket could be interpreted as an attempt to sway the election’s outcome.
The updated bylaws and election code are available to the public on the IUSA website, as are any advisory opinions issued by the Election Commission.
