A handful of complaints from students who felt pressured to sign petitions for the upcoming spring elections were recently brought to the attention of the Administration and Rules Committee of the ASSU. Juany Torres ’13, the chair of the Administration and Rules Committee for the Undergraduate Senate, said that about 5 people had filed complaints stating they felt pressure to sign petitions.
These complaints included cases where students were pressured to sign petitions as candidates stood over their shoulders, as well as incidents where candidates would put their own laptop in front of people and encourage them to sign while the candidate watched. These actions caused some students to feel pressured and to lodge complaints with Torres.
“There are no real rules about petitioning, other than the petitioners need to be Stanford undergraduates,” Torres said.
Torres pointed out that in the ASSU joint bylaws, there are no specific rules prohibiting or regulating any sort of pressuring of students to sign petitions.
When it comes to the actual election, there are sections of the governing documents that have explicit rules regarding pressuring people to vote for a specific candidate or violating the privacy of the secret ballot; however, there is a lack of similar regulation for the petitioning process.
Torres noted that anyone who was concerned with or regretted their signature had the opportunity to contact the Elections Commission to have their name removed from a petition; however, she also acknowledged that many students are unaware of this option.
According to Torres, the Administration and Rules Committee is “working closely with the Elections Commission” to write into the bylaws rules regarding petitioning practices. Though they won’t apply to this year’s elections, Torres said the changes will help in the future.
“We don’t know exactly what we’ll say, but we will work in some language where it explicitly states that if students feel pressured when petitioning, they should e-mail the Elections Commission.”
Stephen Trusheim ’13, the ASSU Elections Commissioner, said that petitioning is one area where the Elections Commission has very little authority.
“We don’t have the authority to tell candidates they can’t watch people sign a petition or something like that,” he said. “The Administration and Rules Committee asked me if I could make or enforce new rules, but I can’t do it without the Undergraduate Senate’s permission.”
Trusheim said that if the Administration and Rules Committee wanted, they had the power to submit rule changes to the Senate, but for this year’s elections, he had very little power to regulate the petitioning process.