Of all issues facing campus, SGA elections are one of the few that transcends the daily grind of University of Alabama goings-on and enters the realm of import. Well, at least it should, in theory.
The SGA election scheduled for March 11 is heading toward irrelevance and will go down in history as another pre-ordained show election that has little value or impact on the student body politic as a whole. Last year, only 5,873 people voted, out of a then student population of roughly 33,000.
Those anemic numbers were a 41.94 percent decrease from the year before, which weren’t that great either.
The most egregious moment of the so-called elections of last year was the presidential contest. In that race, Machine candidate Jimmy Taylor swept in a landslide victory. Of course, nobody ran against him, which probably helped his chances.
It’s not Taylor’s fault. He did his part by running a campaign and deserves kudos for standing up. Unfortunately, the rest of the student body decided they wanted no part in the election and stayed home. How can that be possible? In a true, free and fair election, it is almost unheard of for a candidate to win unopposed. And with all due respect to Jimmy Taylor, George Washington he is not.
Heck, even brutal dictators in unfree countries receive some form of electoral opposition, like Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and Vladimir Putin in Russia.
While it is almost certain that the upcoming presidential election will be contested, it won’t really matter if the rules at the core of the campaign aren’t dramatically changed.
The people with that power are those who sit on the SGA Elections Board. As a seemingly independent body, it can make some changes to the election system that will stoke the fires of democracy on campus and ensure a real choice for students. Here are some things it should do:
1) Allow campaign websites. Currently, candidates are only allowed to use a handful of social media websites to forward their campaigns. This is a silly, unnecessary and overbroad regulation that stifles speech.
2) Lengthen the time allowed for campaigning. As it stands, candidates can start their campaigns on Feb. 24. That allows roughly two weeks for an unknown person to rally enough supporters to win. That’s not a problem if you have a built-in get-out-the vote operation on sorority row, which most potential candidates don’t have. Students should be allowed to announce their candidacy whenever they want and campaign for as long as they want. After all, it is their campaign, and the voters will be the ultimate deciders of proper campaign behavior. Again, this regulation does not protect anybody and only limits constitutionally protected political speech on campus.
3) Chalking should be allowed. It makes no sense for separate chalking rules to apply to candidates than for everybody else. As stipulated by the University’s grounds use policy: “Chalking is only permitted on natural gray concrete sidewalks and streets that are subject to being washed by the rain.” A discriminatory ban on candidate chalking is an affront to constitutionally protected political speech on campus.
4) Get out of the way of democracy. The SGA Elections Board can make some huge strides by just moving out of the way. They should make sure all candidates are playing by the same sensible rules, and that the voters have a real choice on Election Day. Anything more than this impedes true democracy from happening.
The current electoral climate at the University is not democratic and must change if we are to live up to the Capstone Creed that strives to “foster individual and civic responsibility.”
