In the eyes of the SGA, the upcoming student body election is now a two-party race.
The Student Government Association Elections Board fined presidential candidate Natalia Cuadra-Saez $120 Tuesday after she referred to STARE as a “party” in Monday’s Diamondback story announcing her candidacy. The board said publicizing STARE as a party violates election rules because STARE members missed a deadline to hand in a form two weeks ago and consequently refused to pay the $500 fine for it.
Election offenses and their respective fines as listed on the SGA website do not include either of the violations the board cited Cuadra-Saez and STARE for committing.
Members of the elections board declined to comment on the fines, choosing only to write in an e-mail that STARE is not recognized as a formal party. The board said it will “answer questions once elections are over so as not to compromise the validity of the elections process.”
In order to obtain “party” status — that is, to be listed by a party name on the ballot and be able to pool money for campaigning — a list of candidates, their university ID numbers, the positions they are seeking and their e-mail addresses must be submitted to the Elections Board by a certain date every year.
This year, the election rules on the SGA website merely indicate “Thursday, April 1, 2010” as the deadline, but former STARE campaign manager Kenton Stalder — who cannot officially have that title anymore — said he was asked to turn in the form by 6 p.m. that day. He missed the deadline by minutes, according to e-mails acquired by The Diamondback.
“Honestly, they had every piece of information on that form already. It’s really a superfluous form,” said Stalder, who had already handed in forms with the exact same information for each individual STARE candidate.
Stalder sent the elections board an e-mail asking how he could rectify the situation, he said, but he only was told he could meet with them the following morning to discuss how to proceed.
STARE Party members said they could not afford the $500 fine the board asked them to pay by April 12, so the Board retracted their party status. Most other elections fines can be paid off after the week of campaigning, Stalder said.
“Why would we give money to feed a broken system?” he said. “The concept is you get fined and you are able to resolve that fine after the election. No one would pay a fine to be eligible for a spot they don’t win.”
So when Cuadra-Saez referred to her “party” in a quote published in Monday’s Diamondback, the Board fined her an additional $120.
“There’s nothing in the rules that gives them power to levy that kind of fine,” Stalder said. “There’s no rule that says individuals can’t brand themselves together or run as a coalition of individuals that are running for SGA officially as a party.”
Cuadra-Saez said she is appealing this latest fine to the Governance Board. Governance Board Chairman Rudi Sarna said these proceedings are confidential and that he could not comment on the appeal’s status.
Meanwhile, Stalder and Cuadra-Saez said their campaign process has been stalled by trying to legally allocate their resources and funds to each individual candidate, as they can no longer pool their resources without further jeopardizing their ability to participate in the election.
“It’s really complicated, our situation, and we’ve had to put a lot of energy into how we can still be eligible,” Stalder said. “If every individual now has to hand in their own financial reports, we have to find a legal way to use materials we already bought to get into the hands of our candidates.”
Stalder said they’ve been able to do it by having those who purchased campaign materials sell them to each individual candidate and then attain a receipt for the purchases, all of which must eventually be listed in financial reports that are given to the Board.
“It’s drained hours from our campaigning efforts,” Cuadra-Saez said.
Cuadra-Saez added the exorbitant fines exemplifies how the elections process often weeds out only those who can afford to run. Members of STARE have paid out-of-pocket for their campaign, some with donations from friends. Historically, SGA parties have accepted hundreds of dollars at a time in donations from parents, companies and other sources. There is a $4,000 cap on how much a campaign can cost — Stalder said STARE won’t be getting anywhere near that number.
The cap was originally instituted to minimize the advantage a well-funded campaign may have over one without rich patrons.
“We have created an animal that we all hate in government,” former SGA President Andrew Friedson said in 2008. “As it stands now, only the wealthy can run for this position.”
aisaacs@umdbk.com
