MSA passed several amendments, including a decrease in infraction fees, to its Board of Election Commissioners Presidential Election Handbook during full Senate on Wednesday night. Last year’s handbook had previously been reissued without modification for this election year on Jan. 25.
In past years, the BEC chair has made substantial modifications before the handbook, which sets the guidelines for the Missouri Students Association presidential election, is passed. BEC Chairwoman Brooke Wiggins said handbook updates weren’t possible this year because the only applicant for vice chair was not confirmed until Jan. 24. A second was confirmed Wednesday night.
“Once we got to the point where I finally had a vice chair, and after tonight, two vice chairs, it was one of those things that when looking at it, everyone had a lot of ideas of what would be best to change,” Wiggins said.
One hotly debated modification to the handbook was a rule that banned campaign Snapchat accounts.
“We don’t allow Snapchat because they are so hard to regulate,” Wiggins said. “The reason Snapchat was created was because things just disappear, so we’re going to try to stay away from all that.”
The BEC also added an endorsement rule that restricts public endorsement of a candidate to those who are able to vote in the MSA election. Last year, former President-elect Haden Gomez was criticized for paying the popular app Pocket Points to issue an endorsement of his slate.
The system for issuing infractions has also changed. A new rule differentiates between infractions filed before March 1 at 5 p.m. — one week before the election — and after.
A slate’s first violation results in a written warning from the BEC. The second violation will carry a $50 fine, which is $50 less than last year. Any subsequent violation is a $150 fine and a suspension of campaigning for one 24-hour period.
The BEC will contact the slate with one week’s notice about their campaign suspension. After March 1, the first two infractions will hold the same consequences, but any subsequent violation will carry a $200 fine and a potential expulsion from the election.
If a slate fails to pay their infraction fine within a three-day period, there will be an additional fine of up to double the original fine. After a week of no payment of the original fine, the slate will face expulsion from the election.
Members of the Senate debated this third-day fine rate, which was initially placed at $300.
“A lot of people think that $300 is a lot of money to spend for a fine, and I think that initially we didn’t want the number to be 300,” BEC vice chairman Joe Sell said. “Then we made one final change where they wanted to have an amendment lowering it to $200. At the end, it is the discretion of the Senate to make those decisions.”
Slates penalized with an infraction will have 24 hours to file an appeal. In the past, slates only had 12 hours.
“We felt that that was a little bit easier just in case someone has a 12-hour work shift,” Wiggins said. “That would make it very hard to write an appeal in that time.”
The campaign period for the MSA presidential election will begin Monday.
_Edited by Emily Gallion | egallion@themaneater.com_
