Student Organization Election: Procedures and Guidelines

If you are the president or on the executive board for a student organization or group on your college campus, one of the most important responsibilities and duties that you have is ensuring that group elections at the end of the spring term go smoothly and that you have competent people in power in your organization who can get the job done.

Very often I have seen student group's put incompetent people in power simply because they forgot to notify their dedicated members about the elections or forgot to tell someone they had to submit a letter of intent in order to run for the position. Other times, the positions that were up for an election were not properly communicated to the group's membership. There are a slew of different things that can go horribly wrong for your organization. All that it takes for your organization to go downhill and fall apart is for incompetent people to be elected into office.

Rules, Regulations and Election Procedures: The first thing that you will need to consult for the elections in your organization is your organization's bylaws or constitution. Every organization should have an existing rules and regulations in heir bylaws or constitution concerning the governance and protocol for elections. Some organization have a secret ballot vote, others have a voice vote or raising your hand to vote for someone. Elections regulations vary considerably from organization to organization so you want to make sure that you are familiar with all election proceedings heading into the election. That way, if someone tries to challenge something, you can point to your knowledge of the club's bylaws as what that regulation or procedure is being done.

Running for office: in most organizations, the people who are planning on running for a position will need to submit a letter of intent which states their name, what position they are running for, why they are running for that position and their goals in office. In some organizations, that information included in the letter of intent is sent to the entire group's membership prior to the election, while in other organizations that information is just circulated among the executive board of the club.

Vacant positions: As a group leader, it is important for you or for the group's president to email or notify the group's membership as to the date of the election, the time and place of the election, and what positions are open for candidates. You should tell your group's membership about the election at least 2 weeks in advance. In most organizations, the more people that run for a position, the better your organization will be. Competition brings out the best in people and you will get to hear people's ideas of what the future of the organization might hold. The worst thing that can happen to your organization is if an incompetent person runs for a position without being contested in the election. You should speak to the people in your group's membership about running for a position if you think they would do a good job in a leadership position.

Election procedure: Before the start of the election, the person in charge of the organization should read off all of the names of the candidates whom he or she has received letters of intent from and what positions those people are planning on running for. If any position has not received a letter of intent, the president can then ask the general body membership if anyone has any interest in running for that position. As for the election itself, in contested positions with 2 or more candidates, the candidates should each give a short speech no more than 5 minutes long detailing what they aim to accomplish or the future of the organization and what they have contributed towards the organization thus far. After all of the candidates have made their speeches, it is then up to your organization's bylaws or your group's president whether you want the candidates to leave the room and give some secrecy to the voting.

Voting: In terms of the actual voting, like I mentioned previously you can do a secret ballot or you can do a voice vote or have people raise their hands. The group's secretary should record the results of how many people voted for each candidate to determine the winner. In some election proceedings if there are more than two candidates and none of the candidates receive over 50% of the vote, then there is a run-off election between the 2 candidates who had the highest amount of votes.

Any position that is uncontested in the election, you can simply do a voice vote of "yay" or "nay" for the general body membership to approve of that person to office.

After the election has concluded, the president should read of the list of all the candidates who have won positions in your organization for the coming year. An email should also be sent out to the group's membership about the elections for anyone who was unable to attend.