Politics hamper BoE - Board of Elections

While it's been rough for the Board of Elections (BoE), until last month you could say the same for every person who has had to comply with their campaign rules.

If it wasn't low candidate turnout, it was candidate disqualifications. If it wasn't disqualifications, it was Board infighting. If it wasn't infighting, it was a lack of Student Council (StuCo) support.

Internal disagreements arose between the BoE chairs, Mary Keough and Judy Tomkins, and its members.

"There were two different ideologies that were present in the BoE," said Manish Gala, student body president. That of the chairs "was adherent to old precedent, while the other was much more outcome-based and much more rules based," said Gala.

Meanwhile, the BoE-StuCo relationship was "very poor," said Gala.

As Eric Wolkoff told StuCo while a candidate for next year's board, the BoE has a record of who votes -- and not all StuCo members were voting.

StuCo members complained the BoE wasn't keeping them up-to-date.

All five Executive Board members learned about the first Executive Board candidate rules meeting, which was held on a snow day, after the fact, said Gala. Attendance was low. The Executive Board planned another candidate meeting on its own.

As next year's Board stood before Student Council to be appointed, "it was actually the most substantial dialogue that was ever initiated," said Gala.

At the meeting, StuCo approved Matt Bouloubasis and Nick Aseltine, both members of this year's BoE, as chairs.

"I think the chairs really have kind of a liberal agenda to liberalize the rules and be much more outcome based than adherence to precedence and outdated documents. They're heavily motivated to really, really improve the elections and student involvement," said Gala.

The new chairs say they are open to suggestions, talking with StuCo and surveying this year's candidates, said Aseltine.

The new chairs pushed for relaxed campaigning regulations in the year's last election, in which two senior class representatives were elected after Council declared the first two write-in candidates invalid. Newer, relaxed rules permitted innovative campaigning, with one candidate hanging a banner in the breezeway.

"They changed the incentive structure for candidates. The proper incentive for candidates to win is for them to talk to people ... instead of getting their opponent disqualified," said Gala.