BEC prepares for MSA presidential campaign
The BEC allowed candidates to begin campaigns starting Wednesday.
Published Sept. 4, 2009
Candidates in the Missouri Students Association presidential race were able to begin their campaigns as early as 9:30 p.m. Wednesday.
After Operations Committee approved the Board of Elections Commissioners' handbook Tuesday, the full Senate was able to vote on bill 49-03, which officially amended the MSA bylaws to reflect the changes made to the handbook.
The BEC presidential handbook, which contains the guidelines people need to follow in order to run a clean campaign, includes parameters regarding topics such as expenditures, sponsorship and campaign material.
Other than adding a section prohibiting MSA auxiliaries from formally endorsing or disproving candidates, the changes made to the handbook were minimal.
"We took out some of the fluff, took out examples, fixed grammatical errors and changed some of the numbering of forms around, nothing major," BEC Chairman Dan Kelly said.
Elections will take place in early November, but after Wednesday's proceedings, people could officially declare their candidacy, though campaigning has been allowed since the first day of school.
"Basically, now that we're official, candidates can be, too," BEC committee member Sean Haynes said. "We wanted to get this through the Senate as soon as possible so that official campaigns could get started."
In addition to the handbook, other changes regarding the BEC this week included the appointment of an additional senator to the BEC.
Senior Andrew Mikusch was appointed by Senate Speaker Amanda Shelton and unanimously approved at Tuesday's Operations Committee meeting.
"Politics is a hobby of mine," Mikusch said. "I thought MSA and this committee would be a good opportunity to get involved. I'm not as informed on politics as much as normal politicians, so I would like to learn more about how the process works. It's something I've always been interested in."
Mikusch previously served as a peer adviser for Residential Life.
"Going back on my experience as a PA with interpreting election rules, I did that position fairly well when I had it," Mikusch said. "As far as going through the BEC handbook and interpreting its contents, I feel like I can handle that."
In the case of online voting problems like last year, the BEC said it has back-up plans that will be discussed in Operations Committee over the next few weeks.
"Both the paper ballot and e-mail voting are not as desirable as the online voting Web site, vote.missouri.edu," Kelley said. "In favor of accuracy and functionality, if the Web site were for some reason to have problems on election night, I would be in favor of postponing the election until it was available. However, there will be back-up plans in place."
