OUR VIEW: Although Student Government Association has made changes to how the election process works, they are still missing the key factor of validity.
Four years ago, the election process was very different. Those that were here remember the “election scandal” that occurred. It was full of fraud and juvenile behavior. In short, it was all a popularity contest at the time where organizations cheated their way to the top, in attempt to help their friends out by using other student’s private M-numbers to use their vote.
Not to say that can’t happen today, but SGA has put in place rules today that make it harder for just anybody to win the election. Instead of it just being based solely off of popular vote, the nominees also have to meet requirements of grade point averages, community service hours, some sort of campus involvement, and letters of recommendation.
Good job SGA for stepping up the game and making this more than a popularity contest. It’s always great to see nominees out there that are more than just a pretty face, but have school spirit and has good academic standing, which is how it should be.
Even though the nominees have to meet these requirements, doesn’t mean there still aren’t holes in the election process that need fixing. We still have problems with validating who is voting and who isn’t.
Who is to say that you can’t just get people’s M-numbers and submit in as many votes as we want? Well we can. We did.
Today, we sat down and submitted a least a dozen different M-numbers, that we made up, with nominations. On top of that, even though it says we are only allowed to submit two nominations, a boy and a girl of our year, we can submit more that.
Granted, at the end of the week there is a supposed committee of six people that will go back through and not only validate that every candidate makes requirements, but also that every M-number is real, and that every M-number matches a name. Sounds like a lot more work than it should be for one committee of six people who are being kept anonymous.
There should be a way to do it through our portal accounts, which most students go on already, and has our M-numbers linked to it too. It would be easier and would ensure that the election results are never questioned.