IU Student Government passed an election reform bill Monday night in an effort to improve the election process that led to controversy last spring.
The new bill, The Reform Act, clarifies rules surrounding campaign messaging, changes the role of election manager to election director and transfers responsibility for deciding election complaints to the IUSG Supreme Court.
In the old system, the election manager was responsible for both overseeing elections and deciding on complaints. In the new system, all election complaints will be decided by a randomized panel of three justices from the Supreme Court. The change aims to reinforce public confidence, allow the election director to focus on running the election process and decrease time spent waiting on decisions.
“We wanted to change it, so that way it was a more fair process, and people had faith in the process of the election,” Leo Cavinder, co-author of the bill and chair of the Committee on Student Rights and Concerns, said.
The bill also makes changes to telecommunications rules. In the past, the Improper Use of Telecommunications clause governing use of media by campaigns classified campaign telecommunications as email, text or telephone calls. Messaging apps such as GroupMe were not clearly classified.
The last IUSG presidential contest had several disputes over telecommunication rules. The UNITED campaign, led by Dylan Schutte and Reese Wiley, won the popular vote with 49.26% of the vote but was disqualified for violation of election telecommunications rules. The IUSG Supreme Court ruled sending GroupMe messages without an opt-out option violated IUSG bylaws. Following UNITED’s disqualification, the FUSE campaign won the election.
This spring’s election was not an anomaly. Debates surrounding the Improper Use of Telecommunications clause date back to at least 2021, when the Inspire campaign received several complaints about its use of group messaging systems.
The Reform Act hopes to avoid similar conflicts in the future.
With the new bill, group text messages and GroupMe messages are classed together as “chatroom” communication. Campaigns may send one unsolicited campaign message per chatroom per week during the campaign period. During the voting period, they are permitted one unsolicited campaign message per day.
The bill contains several other smaller changes, such as creating a recommendation committee where the president, the chief justice and the speaker of Congress recommend the election director before nomination by the president and confirmation by the Supreme Court. In the past, the Supreme Court nominated the election director and the Supreme Court confirmed them. The bill also changes the declaration process for candidates for the presidency and downgrades the severity of several election violations.
“Immediately after the spring election, I believe my first text was to Leo (Cavinder), like ‘We need to fix this mess,’” Shane Sanders, a representative for Northwest neighborhood, said.
Cavinder and Sanders introduced the Reform Act at the first legislative meeting of the session back in April, but the bill only passed Monday at the final meeting of this session of Congress.
When Sanders, Cavinder and co-author Maddi Sponsel, the press secretary for Congress, attempted to bring the bill onto the floor for debate at the Sept. 16 meeting, members of the executive and judicial branches were opposed.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Leyla Fern King told Congress she chose to delay voicing opposition of the bill “to allow Congress to develop its own conclusions (about the bill).” She expressed concern that the new telecommunications section left gaps in the rules and wanted members of Congress to discuss the bill further with the judicial and executive branches before moving forward.
Schutte and Wiley, the candidates from the disqualified UNITED campaign, waited in the back of the room during the Sept. 16 meeting to share why they feel the bill is important.
“This bill will prevent future breaches of injustice from happening in every other election,” Schutte said.
Despite their speeches, the bill was sent back to committee for further discussion. Cavinder then met privately with student body president Cooper Tinsley and other executive branch members to hash out concerns.
“We spent four hours that Saturday debating and working out an agreement for the framework,” Cavinder said. "And then we spent that whole week working on language specifically for the bill. He noted that some members of the executive branch thought a meeting would be unproductive and would fail to reach any consensus. But Cavinder said upon meeting with Tinsley, they were able to find common ground.
“He was the one behind the whole justice panel thing, which I think was a great idea,” Cavinder said.
It is this spirit of collaboration that they believe allowed the bill to pass just in time for the end of the session.
“This bill originated from some frustration, but I think it has become a product of collaboration with all parties,” Sponsel said. “One thing we have all been able to do really well is humble ourselves because people who were involved on both sides of the conflict in the spring are people who made this bill possible.”
