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.