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Election rules yet again posed obstacles for Student Government Association candidates.
One person was disqualified from running for elections and four people received warnings.
SGA would not provide the name of the candidate disqualified.
“Most of campaigning is following the rules, and to be on SGA, we have strict procedures for the way we spend our money,” SGA Adviser Michael Houston said. “So if someone can’t campaign right, then maybe that shows that someone is not going to be a good SGA member.”
Freshmen candidates worked fast to meet as many students as possible before and during voting times, which ran from 8 a.m. Wednesday through 8 a.m. today.
“It was kind of stressful just because we were trying to fit campaigning in while doing all of our school work,” freshman presidential candidate Liz Abend said. “We had to fill out a petition to get a certain amount of people to sign that we could run. I used Facebook, hung up a lot of signs in the dorms and cafeteria and introduced myself to people around campus.”
Abend’s scramble caused run-ins with the rules. Some warnings to candidates consisted of how big posters could be, how many they could have, where they could post them, and how much money they could spend.
“I got a warning for having some of my signs on the ground. It wasn’t a big deal, and they took care of it and picked them all up,” Abend said.
There were a total of 44 candidates: 23 freshmen for eight senator spots, nine for freshman president, five for sophomore senator positions, four for sophomore president, one for junior senator and two for senior senator positions.
There were three vacancies for the senior senator positions due to the resignation of two senators and the reassignment of a third member.
Junior Kristen Compean, the elections director for SGA, was in charge of gathering candidates to run for the positions, promoting the elections and overseeing anything that could go wrong.
“I have been on the senate for the past two years, so this is definitely a change,” Compean said. “I enjoy this position because I have the opportunity to interact with all classes, but the hard part of the job is letting someone know they have been removed from the ballot.”
The recent use of online elections has increased the amount of votes by 22 percent, made voting more convenient, and election results more immediate, according to SGA President Leon Dixson.
At the time of press, SGA had not yet released the election results.
Submitted 09-15-2005
MALIBU, CA
