EDITORIAL: Election reform; good job, good effort.

Beginning on the Sept. 17 Senate meeting, the Student Government Council at the Modesto Maidique Campus has begun passing a series of bills aimed at reforming the SGC-MMC elections code from how it stood during the highly scrutinized 2012 SGC-MMC elections.

The Beacon can’t help but say, it’s about damn time.

Given the dramatics over minutiae – unnecessary calamity caused over pre-established debate moderators, unethical coercion of votes through undesignated, yet still legal, polling stations, and let us not forget attempts at purging candidates associated with unofficial political parties – it’s about time proper legislation is put into writing outlining what is, and isn’t the proper conduct of not only candidates, but the elections commission as well.

It’s about time a code of ethics was incorporated into the elections code, especially one that specifically denounces candidates from “committing or attempting to commit extortion or blackmail.”

Hopefully this will prevent members associated with any future tickets from shoving iPads into unaffiliated students’ faces and pressuring them to vote for a specific candidate.

However, The Beacon can’t help but lament over two provisions of the elections code reforms and one major neglected aspect.

Appeals made regarding the decisions of the elections commission’s decisions can only be made to the Elections Commissions, and disqualification of any candidate can only be made based on a unanimous vote of the Elections Commission, instead of a specified majority.

Both of these points pave the way for an inherent conflict of interest.

Not only do we think the elections commission wouldn’t change their original decision, but they wouldn’t give an appeal the time of day.

Smells a bit redundant.

Then to make it so that the disqualification is based on the unanimous vote of the elections commission instead of a specified majority – lets say a 2/3 vote – makes it so a single member of the elections commission that supports the candidate in question can vote nay in terms of disqualification and thus negating the disqualifications process.

What is the major point that is being neglected, you may ask: the fact that you are only enacting Election reforms for MMC when in reality election code reforms should be taken at the University-wide level including the Student Government Council at the Biscayne Bay Campus delegation in order to have one cross-University Election Code that regulates all elections.

Don’t forget, the Modesto Maidique Campus is not Florida International University.

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