I wanted to start this reply off by stating its purpose – I’m writing today to address some of the concerns brought up in the original article, and to clarify several points regarding the Spring General Election. I wholly recognize and respect the opinions presented by Mr. Jabusch and hope that this piece continues the dialogue about the issues raised within his piece.  They are very much correct: The Board of Elections, and Student Government as a whole, has had issues with engaging voters and facilitating interactions between SG representatives and their constituents. This particular conversation is something that I agree needs to be continually looked at, but one that also falls outside my purview as a member of the Board of Elections.

First, I would like to correct a point made by the author about the campaign support fund. As written in a previous article, “SG will provide funding to all candidates and lower the maximum spending caps.” I want to clarify that this is not entirely correct: SG will only be providing funding for contested races for Student Body Officer positions (Student Body President & Vice President, Senate President, Student Body Treasurer, and Student Body Chief Justice). The elections fund and associated regulations were created in a bill passed by the Student Senate on January 23rd. Though this bill only creates the regulation that funding be offered to candidates in contested races, since this is the first year SG is providing this, we wanted to focus on particular, high-cost races. Additionally, as mentioned in the article by Mr. Jabusch and as detailed in the bill, most Senate races are uncontested and candidates for those seats typically spend very little money as they seek election. The article is correct in that Student Senate did reduce spending limits for all races, including senate races. Details on the previous limits and new amounts is in the previously mentioned bill.

Next, I want to provide some elaboration and context to several of the concerns brought up about campaigning. In regard to residence halls, the rules BOE has in place within the Elections Handbook stem from NC State University policy on Solicitation (see section 5.3 Procedures Specific to University Housing) and Visitors in Residence Halls. The BOE has consistently worked to ensure that regulations within the Elections Handbook are in line with University PRRs, recognizing that students who are campaigning may not be aware of every relevant regulation and need a clear resource on what is and is not allowed in campaigning. As for the handbook requirements that go beyond what is covered in that policy (i.e preventing Door to Door Campaigning and the distribution of campaign materials inside or within 25 feet of a residence hall), these were implemented to ensure that all candidates have equal access for campaigning, and students that were able to get on-campus housing did not have a significant advantage over those that did not, particularly given past issues with guaranteeing housing for students and the mandatory first year live on requirement.

As for SG-sponsored events, this is something that has come up frequently in internal discussions from the Board of Elections. We’ve considered hosting events before, but this poses a challenge – as the Board is an objective body with oversight of the process, we would need to require candidate attendance in order for this to remain an equitable elections process. In those discussions, we determined that it would put excess stress on both the candidates and the Board itself. For undergraduate Senate races, candidates are informed of the Honors Quad Council debate, which allows for any candidate for office to speak and explain their campaign goals. Additionally, undergraduate candidates are encouraged to attend their specific College Council meeting to introduce themselves to their constituents. 

We are working to make candidate biographies a better resource for student voters. For the past several election cycles, candidate biographies have been published on the SG Elections website once books close for the given cycle, a practice that we will be continuing this spring. This gives students eleven days from initial posting to the day of voting to view and access information on candidates and other issues on the ballot. Once the packet is completed, SG will be publicizing this in the HOWL and other social media accounts. In previous elections, submission of the candidate bio has been optional and has taken place after the candidate has filed to run, which has led to a shorter window for students to review this information. For this semester, the Board of Elections has introduced two required biographical questions within the online Intent to Run form that state:

Please describe your qualifications for the position you are seeking.

What changes do you hope to make through Student Government?

With these questions, the Board of Elections is hoping to provide consistent information on all candidates about both their qualifications for office and their goals in the position. Additionally, the Board provides this information to all students through inclusion on the actual ballot, a stark contrast to ballots for local, state, and federal government elections. We invite suggestions for alternative ways of providing this information if it truly is a challenge to “trudge” through candidate biographies in order to be informed. It is our goal to provide information about all candidates to as many students as possible in a fair and unbiased manner, and we will continue to work to improve this process.           

Finally, I’ll talk about the steps SG and the Board of Elections are taking to generate more interest in the election. SG has hosted three interest meetings to date where we provided information about what Student Government does and some preliminary information about the Election. Both of these events were advertised in the HOWL sent out on February 5th, including a link to the elections website where interested candidates could find more information and the Intent to Run form, which has now been moved online to be more accessible for candidates. Additionally, Elections Fund and information on how to file for candidacy were included in the HOWL on February 12th. We have also been working hard to spread information about elections via SG social media accounts. If you are interested in running in the Spring election, information can be found on our website. As a step toward addressing the issue of low voter turnout, the Board is adding an additional polling location in Fountain Dining Hall (other potential polling locations will be: The Brickyard, Wolf Plaza or Talley). Last, the Board has been in contact with each College’s Student Services and are working with those individuals to send out information about voting on the day of the election. Separate from the BOE, the SG Executive Communication Department is working to create a video featuring reasons to vote in the Election and why those elections matter to the Student Body.

Each of these changes was made in the hopes of addressing concerns brought to the Board of Elections, and we will be continuing to assess their impact throughout and after the Spring General Election. I want to reiterate that the purpose of this article was to address the concerns mentioned in a previous article, and I hope that this response has provided additional context to those concerns.

If any student has questions, ideas, or concerns that they would like to see addressed in the Elections process, I would encourage those students to contact Lilly Neal, Chair of the Board of Elections at sgelections@ncsu.edu.

Lee Daniel is a 3rd year student studying biology & public health and serves as Finance Co-Chair for the Board of Elections, a role he has filled since Spring 2018.