William Bleveans: Bella Martin’s USAC victory should be revoked to uphold election code

Unfortunately for politics-weary students, the high drama that characterized last week’s student government elections is unlikely to abate anytime soon.

The results of this year’s Undergraduate Students Association Council elections left many students in disbelief. Bella Martin, a candidate for general representative, won a council seat despite revelations that she had committed a serious violation of the USAC Election Code. Specifically, the USAC Election Board determined that Martin violated a student’s right to vote in privacy at a fraternity party on May 3, the day before voting closed.

Martin’s election as general representative has weakened the student body’s faith in the legitimacy of the democratic process, but this does not have to be the case. If the election board is serious about obeying the strictures of the election code and maintaining the integrity of our campus democracy, it will void Martin’s victory, thereby setting a precedent for disqualifying candidates who violate the right of students to vote in privacy.

Clearly, the election board has the ability to nullify the victory of a recently elected candidate. Candidates are required to acknowledge before they begin campaigning that they may be “disqualified from the election process upon severe infraction of the Election Code.” Martin’s election victory surely has not indemnified her against these sorts of penalties. The election board corroborated this reading of the election code in a May 4 Facebook post that asserted that violating the right of students to vote in privacy “ought to disqualify any (offending) candidate from public office.”

In fact, one of the penalties to which Martin is still subject involves the right to privacy in voting. Article VIII, Section 1.2 of the election code specifies in no uncertain terms that all students possess the right to vote in privacy. This is less of a specific rule than a basic principle, one that should guide the election board as it handles Martin’s case. Clearly, Martin violated this central tenet of the Election Code by invading the privacy of a student during the voting process.

The corrosive effect of Martin’s violation on our student government elections requires the election board to impose the most stringent punishment possible. Article XI, Section 3.5 of the Election Code states that the election board will impose punishments in proportion to the “severity and effect of the offense on the election,” among other criteria. Considering the importance of the right to privacy in voting, Martin’s offense has severely degraded our elections.

The right to cast a ballot privately is about more than just personal comfort. It implicates each student’s basic political rights: the right to one’s own political opinions, the right to express those opinions and the right to make a difference in the democratic process. Violating a student’s right to vote in privacy is no different than walking into a polling booth and telling someone how to cast their ballot. Voiding Martin’s victory seems like a reasonable measure in view of the gravity of this sort of violation.

Additionally, such a disqualification would restore the student body’s faith in the sanctity of the election process. The election board has abdicated its responsibility under the election code “to ensure that each candidate is afforded an opportunity for election equal to that of any other candidate” by allowing Martin to remain in her seat. Nullifying Martin’s victory would restore the election board’s legitimacy and, by extension, the integrity of our student government elections.

Furthermore, voiding Martin’s victory would allow the election board to set a precedent for disqualifying candidates engaged in this sort of behavior. Dealing with Martin’s case decisively would make future USAC candidates think twice about violating students’ right to vote in privacy in order to benefit their campaigns. It would also make it clear that such violations are antithetical to the election board’s values.

Obviously, the one student whose privacy was violated did not decide the general representative race, but that is beside the point. Whether a candidate intrudes upon one student’s or a thousand students’ voting is not fundamentally important. What matters is that violating the right of students to vote in privacy strikes at the heart of the election code and the sanctity of our student government elections. As a matter of principle, even one such violation warrants swift and decisive punishment.

The election board should have the guts to do what is necessary. The legitimacy of our elections depends on it.