SGA imposes new voting system

Last year's University of Memphis general election for the Student Government Association saw infractions concerning misplaced campaign material, misappropriation of funds and misconduct by student candidates.

This year, SGA President Tyler DeWitt plans to eliminate that behavior by implementing a new system, which will reduce the percentage of overall votes received by the party in violation.

"Under this system, candidates are held directly accountable for their actions by a penalty that is enforceable," DeWitt said.

Under the old system, candidates who conducted themselves improperly received monetary fines once a formal grievance had been filed. However, fines had never actually been issued until last year, DeWitt said.

"This led to some serious issues concerning whether SGA has the right to assess such a fine and where the proceeds from any fine would go," he said.

Last year, then-President Hunter Lang violated University and election policies and the Finding Answers Concerning Everyone party was fined $350. The 14 representatives elected from the FACE party were responsible for those fines before taking office.

However, the election commission waived the fines, not wanting to "add insult to injury," DeWitt said. He said SGA revised the policy in order to hold those running for election more accountable for their actions.

"The former system did not hold candidates accountable for their actions," DeWitt said. "Under the previous laws, if a candidate had some money and wanted to absolutely plaster the campus with illegally placed yard signs, posters, flyers, then the only penalty they would receive is a fine."

Under the new election laws, if the same scenario were to happen, the candidate in violation would be subject to a percentage loss of their final votes received.  

Dean of Students Stephen Petersen, who is also the adviser for the SGA, said he thought the new policy was fair.

"After last year, there was a reasonably high sentiment among many people that the fining process wasn't working and wasn't an effective deterrent to keep candidates from not putting their posters and their advertising and their solicitation materials all over the campus and so forth," he said.

Petersen suggested to DeWitt that he poll other colleges and universities to see how their systems were set up. What he came up with is The University's new system—a blend of Vanderbilt and the University of Florida, DeWitt said.

"I don't know if it will work or not — we'll find out this time around," Petersen said. "The wonderful thing about student governance is it's always an open agenda as far as opportunities to change things, so if this system doesn't work as they hope it will, they'll have to look for a different method."

The senators intending to run for SGA president in the upcoming election — Russell Born, Hunter Dawson and Nicholas Mastron — have collectively agreed that the new system will serve as an adequate leveraging mechanism, Petersen said.

Under the new election laws, the person filing the grievance must prove that the candidate in question actually violated the laws.

DeWitt said that these new laws were not in place to take away the voice of the students.

"There has to be an effective system in place to hold elected officials accountable.  The most recent SGA elections have not had such a system and, consequently, have been sullied with egregious violations and controversy," he said.  

DeWitt said it is the SGA's responsibility is to ensure a system of accountability during the SGA election and throughout any elected student's term in office.

"Students are not losing their voice in the election. Last year, students demanded that SGA be held accountable. So, SGA is holding itself and its candidates accountable," he said.