In this year’s SGA elections, candidates were asked to submit applications by Friday, March 15 at 5 p.m.
However, SGA Elections Commissioner Sarah Appleton confirmed that applications for members of the Real Deal Party were not submitted until 6 p.m. that day.
“The party list was actually turned in at about 6 p.m., and the petition forms for most of the party’s candidates were submitted shortly before that,” Appleton said.
Because of their tardiness, the Real Deal Party received a stricter spending limit in their campaign by having $250 taken away, even though Appleton said she could have chosen to disqualify them.
“Although techinically, I could have disqualified the individuals from running or participating in a party, I chose not to do so for two reasons: One, the individual candidates turned in their forms on time, just in the wrong place. The forms were in the SGA office well before 5 p.m.; they just weren’t in the right box. Two, I did not do as good of a job of publicizing the deadline as I should have, so I felt like it was partly my fault that the party list was late,” Appleton said.
Appleton said that for many individuals within the Real Deal Party, the tardiness wasn’t their fault.
“The petition forms for most of the party’s candidates were submitted shortly before [6 p.m.]. What happened is that the candidates were instructed by someone, I don’t know who, to put their petition forms under Alex Wilson’s office door on the due date so that he could come by and review them before they were turned in, and he was late in arriving at his office,” Appleton said.
This is not the first time an election party has faced a penalty because of a violation. SGA Advisor and UC Director Steve Vantrease said that the consequences for violations are determined by the SGA Elections Commissioner on a case-by-case basis.
“There are no set penalties for any given infraction. We have, which I agree with, given the Elections Commissioner broad, or exclusive, rights to determine guilt and establish punishment (with or without the assistance of an Election Commission). I agree with the concept that each incident deserves evaluation based upon the situation. An appeal of any given interpretation is available [for] any candidate via the SGA Judicial process,” Vantrease said.
At no time in Vantrease’s position with UTM does he remember a candidate or party being disqualified from an SGA election.
“At no time in my history with SGA, either as advisor or an interested volunteer, do I know of any election infraction serious enough to disqualify any individual candidate or party. If you think about it, a penalty to not permit participation in the election process would have to be very serious to deny our students the option of choice in such a potentially important matter. In my estimation, infractions involving deceit or fraud would more likely
reach that threshold to merit complete disqualification,” Vantrease said.
However, he has seen candidates violate election policy and face consequences.
“Various penalties have been prescribed over my history with SGA. Such things as loss of deposit, restrictions in campaigning (process, method, funding, etc.), financial fine, reduction of campaign material, etc. have been imposed by previous administrations,” Vantrease said.
