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26 UWM students get the boot from election
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The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Student Association removed 26 students running for student government from the ballot for campaign violations Wednesday.
The candidates, all of whom were from the Achieving Student Action through Progress party, were booted off the ballot on orders from Independent Election Commissioner Dan Bahr for negative campaigning deemed “inappropriate.”
ASAP and its opposing party, Students United For Change, each accumulate points of demerit from the IEC for violating campaign policies, according to Chris Ahmuty, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin. When these points reach a certain threshold, the election commissioner has discretion in punishing the party in a way he or she sees fit.
According to Ahmuty, most of the negative campaigning incidents ASAP is being reprimanded for are chalking and flyers against SUFC. However, he said the distribution of demerit points was unfair in assuming that the party, as a whole, was responsible for the negative messages.
UW-Milwaukee junior Julio Guerrero, an ASAP member running for vice president, said the entire situation reflected the “corruption of the system.”
“The independent election commissioner should be an impartial position, but Dan Bahr is a former speaker of the senate, and a co-founder of SUFC,” Guerrero said. “This IEC position is being used as a tool of the incumbent party against us.”
According to Guerrero, the bylaws the IEC follows give Bahr excessive power.
“The bylaws give [Bahr] a lot of discretion when it comes to assessing points,” Guerrero said. “The IEC can assess points for actions deemed inappropriate. I think that itself is unconstitutional. … There are too many articles in the constitution of bylaws that are overly broad.”
Ahmuty said the ACLU of Wisconsin has been hearing many complaints about the election system at UWM.
“ACLU has been monitoring the elections and campaigning for a while because we’ve had complaints about the process,” Ahmuty said. “The system set up by the Student Association has some problems.”
According to Ahmuty, these problems include the broadness of the term “inappropriate” and the recent involvements of Bahr, the president, and the chief justice of the Student Association with SUFC.
UWM students can still write in the names of ASAP candidates, according to Guerrero.
“Since we’ve been written off the ballots, we’ve been handing out flyers with all 26 candidates’ names on them,” Guerrero said.
Ahmuty said although certain members have been written off the ballot before, he is not aware of another situation in which an entire party was removed. He added he suspects there will be changes to the system in the near future.
“We’ll have to see what the outcome of the election is, but I suspect that people who want the election to be meaningful for students will want to change the rules,” he added.
Bahr declined comment Thursday.
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It sounds like the UW System needs to step in and throw out the entire student government at Milwaukee.
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UWM student government has been corrupt for years. It kinda blows my mind that every year they are able to kick the opposition party off the ballot and the administration basically says “whaaaaaaa??” wow.
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Jason Rae, where you at?
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It is a matter of time before other political scandals are uncovered. State Democratic Party is next… many of the same “methods” use at UWM are regularly practiced by CDW. It is only a matter of time more people come forward and reveal all the shady practices of the last 5 years.
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They never have kicked off an entire party before. The situation as a whole just further portrays how stunted and god-awful the UW-Milwaukee IEC is. There will definitely be some changes made to the constitution or by-laws, and if there isn’t, then that further reflects the ineptitude of the student government there. Changes need to be made.
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still beats ASM
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This is why we clearly need more government at all levels to protect us from government from other levels. - Germain E. Stemme
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Thanks for the support!!! The IEC and current UWM SA are an embarrassment to the whole UW system.
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Since I have followed this election somewhat, it would be wise to get both sides of what actually happened instead of basing your comments entirely upon this rather biased article. Do some changes need to be made to the constitution and bylaws at UWM? Probably. Is that something being rationally discussed by some members of both parties post election? Yes. But thinking or deciding that the current campaign rules and bylaws are “unfair” and just do not apply to ASAP pre-election was not the brightest tack to take. This sense of entitlement and playing the victim both before and after the results is hilarious. It’s like watching keystone cops. Take some responsibility. ASAP screwed themselves out of this election. Playing the blame game just doesn’t cut it.
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Since I’ve finally started paying attention to the UW-Milwaukee Student Government, I see that they keep imposing “Penalty” election points on anyone opposing the current SUFC party (Students United For Change)..basically stifling all/any criticism.. For example in Feb 2008 - they actually had the nerve to try to pass a “Sedition Act”http://www.expressmilwaukee.com/article-935-sedition-at-uwm.html making any criticism ILLEGAL..!!!!!
Also they want to keep students in the DARK about what they actually do/who they are.. They would not tell me who voted for the SEDITION act - no, not even the “Speaker” of the Senate Tyler Drahheim would give me this info….
They try to punish the opposing party for passing out lists of it’s candidates!!! How are we supposed to KNOW who they are to VOTE for them….This is RIDICULOUS & UNDEMOCRATIC.
The student government at UW-Milwaukee is an embarasment. They do not even have any african americans on the senate to represent that segment of the student body here.
the word FASCIST may apply to the government by the UW-Milwaukee Senate as I’ve seen them demonstrate here.
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“They try to punish the opposing party for passing out lists of it’s candidates!!! How are we supposed to KNOW who they are to VOTE for them….This is RIDICULOUS & UNDEMOCRATIC.
The student government at UW-Milwaukee is an embarasment. They do not even have any african americans on the senate to represent that segment of the student body here.”
It’s all about their constitution and bylaws. If you supported their party then you knew who to vote for. It is against the bylaws to campaign after Thursday midnight. It doesn’t matter who you are or whether you think it is fair or not. They passed out their write in lists both Friday and Saturday like it didn’t apply to them. Obviously it made for a close election. Fair, probably not.
This is the group that chalked vote independent because they were too dense to even understand they were write ins until the very end of the week. This is who you would choose to lead? People who don’t even know the rules of the organization they are trying to be elected to and if they do, don’t follow them because they deem them unfair. Get real!
As far as there not being any African Americans, perhaps it is because none ran or were elected.