The Student Government Association (SGA) passed Bill 56sl31 to revise the Code of Elections with an 11-0 vote and one abstention on Nov. 14. The edits — which include measures like removing the full-time student requirement for presidential candidates, allowing candidates needing financial assistance to receive 100% of campaign funds from SGA and clarifying the steps SGA will take in the event of a “no confidence” win — will go into effect immediately, in time for the spring election cycle.
The Election Reform Commission (ERC), composed of SGA members tasked with revising the Code of Elections, began meeting once a week over the summer to discuss revisions as part of SGA’s broader governing documents overhaul. Following the Code of Elections, SGA hopes to review all of their governing documents, according to SGA Speaker of the Legislature Alyssa Stegall (21Ox, 23C).
The ERC included Stegall, SGA President Noah Marchuck (24C), SGA Vice President Aditi Vellore (21Ox, 23C), SGA Attorney General Grace Lee (21Ox, 24C), SGA Deputy Attorney General Colin Wells (22Ox, 24C), SGA Elections Board Chair Annie Skelton (21Ox, 23C), Vice Chair of the Board of Elections Luxe Langmade (22Ox, 24C) and Vice President of Communications Jessica Lan (24B).
Marchuck, Skelton, Lee and Wells sponsored the bill.
The Code of Elections overhaul includes multiple changes to the elections process. Previously, SGA could provide only 50% of a candidate’s campaign funds. Under the new code, candidates needing financial assistance can petition SGA to provide 100% of their funds, so students will no longer need to fundraise to support their campaign.
“It’s really exciting that, for the first time, we’re allowing candidates to receive up to 100% of the possible campaign funds, especially candidates who financially don’t have a place to obtain those funds,” Vellore said.
SGA also removed the full-time enrollment requirement for presidential candidates, meaning part-time students are now allowed to run for SGA president. However, gap year students are still ineligible to run for office during their time off, Stegall explained.
“You cannot run because you’re not an enrolled student, but any further changes that we would want to make, we would have to change the constitution, which is a much longer process and it would be a different governing document than what we’re working on at the time,” Stegall said.
The SGA Constitution states that the president must “be an undergraduate student enrolled at Emory University.”
Additional Code of Elections changes include removing write-in candidacy options and all gendered language, as well as editing the documents to have more concise and understandable language.
The new Code of Elections also sets guidelines for what to do in the event of a “no confidence” presidential win, clarifying that the line of succession would be invoked. The vice president-elect would assume the role of president-elect, and the vice presidential spot would be filled by the speaker of the legislature, Marchuck said.
Multiple members of SGA and the ERC hope that these changes will facilitate a more inclusive SGA, as many of the changes were inspired by roadblocks that students have encountered due to ambiguities in the Code of Election and SGA Constitution.
Skelton cited the inconsistencies between the Constitution and Code of Elections as an example of these roadblocks, noting that the old Code of Elections outlined that presidential candidates must be full-time undergraduate students, whereas the Constitution said that presidential candidates must be enrolled at Emory.
“The main issue last year was there was a mismatch in that wording,” Skelton said.
The new reforms eliminated the mismatch in candidacy eligibility, matching the terminology in the Constitution with the terminology in the Code of Elections.
This change follows last spring’s SGA election, in which former-SGA Presidential Candidate Elisabet Ortiz (24C) was disqualified from the race due to her enrollment status as a gap year student. She called on the student body to vote “no confidence,” which she continued to support even after she later dropped out of the race. Ortiz expressed that voting “no confidence” was a vote in solidarity with disenfranchised students.
In an unprecedented event in SGA history, “no confidence” won the presidential election over Stegall after advancing to a runoff. Emma Friese (24C) and Sruti Kumar (20Ox, 22C) later challenged the Board of Elections on the constitutionality of the runoffs, alleging that there was no written identifiable procedure in SGA governing documents on how to proceed after a “no confidence” win.
The Constitutional Council held that the runoff was constitutional and Marchuck, who was the vice-president elect, was ultimately sworn in as president.
“It was definitely an unexpected phenomenon,” Marchuck said. “The changes that we made weren’t directly because of what happened last year. It was because for a number of years, there’s been issues with the Code of Elections during election season. It’s not just an isolated thing, it happens almost every year, essentially, but nothing has ever been done to change that.”
Friese declined to comment. Ortiz did not respond to request for comment.
Looking forward, SGA members, including Skelton, expressed hopes that the revised Code of Elections would make SGA a more inclusive community.
“This document is meant to be revised every year,” Skelton said. “It’s a living document. The past few times have just been bandages here and there, and so the document kind of looked like a patchwork quilt, really out of place. Now, it’s much more cohesive.”
