The Election Commitee has reached a decision on an allegation made to the Committee. The candidate has been informed of the decision, and as such the Election Committee is releasing the text of the decision to the public.
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On January 27, 2010 an allegation was made to the Election Committee that candidate Jenna Goodhand was in violation of the Federation of Students’ Election Procedures. The allegation read as follows:
On Wednesday, Jan 27 2010 I visited Jenna Goodhand's website for her VP Internal Campaign.
I noticed that she is now soliciting the emails from people for an 'MP3 Player contest". I am already aware of the fact that an
allegation was made for the use of unapproved campaign materials and possibly bribery. However, this one is different.
Her website reads:
"I don’t just want to share with you my vision for Waterloo. A big part of my platform is about showing appreciation and celebrating all the wonderful things that students on campus do to make our experience a shared one. That being said I would love to show you my personal thanks for your support of my campaign by entering you into a draw to win an MP3 player when the election period has drawn to a close. Send me an email with the subject line “Contest” and five UW email addresses of your closest friends. For every five addresses you send me I will put your name into the draw. The draw will be held just after the voting period, stay tuned for details!"
I allege that this tactic in the Federation of Students campaign is not "above reproach " as found in council procedure 6.
The reasoning that I believe this method of campaigning is not above reproach is because:
- "above reproach" can be defined by dictionary.com and thesaurus.com as "having nothing wrong with it" or "above suspicion".
- Asking students to provide emails of their closest friends to win an MP3 player, is misleading the students into handing over their friend's personal information.
- It can only be speculated that if Jenna were to receive 5 emails of people she doesn't know, she would then solicit them to her website, to vote for her, all without those people's permission to have their information shared or to be contacted.
- When a website is asking for "5 emails of your friends" those
emailed are then placed on an email list, where the email owners are then spammed. How are we to know how these students can remove themselves from Jenna's email list?
- There is a clear difference between students reading a campaign poster and then visiting "whoisgoodhand.com" in comparison to having a friend (or anyone that knows their email for that matter) added them to a spamming list.
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- Students who do not wish to be involved in the FedS election are then "spammed" into it. This could possibly hurt the image of FedS, because all students assume that any contact, email, or method used by candidates is approved. I can't imagine anyone has approved the solicitation of student's personal emails without their consultation.
- Additionally, because of the system that has been set up, the
anonyminity of the request for friends' emails, there is nothing to stop Jenna from using email contacts from her personal endeavors, to email these influencable students, and say "a friend gave us your email", rather than it just being Jenna plugging in the emails. There is no way to stop her from using every email list of names she has from the various organizations she is in. As we all know, many clubs will email members without the blind carbon copy option, and then all the email addresses are shared.
- There is no way to monitor if personal and professional contact information is being entered, resulting in work addresses, business addresses, and even email lists from being added to her list. Having employees or members of organizations be solicited to vote in this election because their email was submitted to her puts the Federation of Students at risk for distrupting the impartiality of those places that can influence students (Book store employees, bomber employees, etc.)
Any reasonable person would agree that solictation of emails from friends is definitely not above reproach, as there are many things wrong with it.
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After consideration of the allegation, the Elections Committee cannot assume in good faith that the accused would have any malicious intent with the email addresses nor can we assume that the accused would spam them. Since the Election Committee cannot assume malicious intent we can also assume that the campaigning is “above reproach”. Council Procedure 6 does not provide any provisions for the collection of personal information in the campaign and since the Election Committee considers the method to be “above reproach” as there is no proof of intent to the contrary the Election Committee does not find a violation of Council Procedure 6.
The Election Committee shall review this decision when it compiles the election report for Council and will suggest Council have a discussion on the collection of personal information.
Regards,
Chris Neal
Chief Electoral Officer
Federation of Students
