Editorial: USAC Election Code should require disclosure of campaign donations
By Editorial Board
July 7, 2014 12:00 a.m.
On Thursday, the University of California Student Association voted to recommend that the UC Board of Regents delay the confirmation of student regent-designate nominee Avi Oved until September.
Two days earlier, students from several UC campuses participated in a two-hour emergency UCSA conference call, many expressing their distrust in Oved for not disclosing alleged contributions to his 2013 Undergraduate Students Association Council campaign for internal vice president. Oved’s supporters countered that the accusations came out of thin air and that Oved was being singled out for his pro-Israel beliefs.
In a Q&A; session with The Bruin Friday, Oved stated his case simply: “I did (not) do anything wrong.”
As far as reporting campaign finances in USAC elections, he’s absolutely right. So too are any UCLA students accused of “dishonest” campaign finance disclosure practices. According to the Undergraduate Students Association Election Code, student candidates for any office are only required to verify expenses incurred during the election process.
Nowhere in the 29-page document – last amended in February of last year – are the words “contribution” or “donation” even mentioned. This points to a definitive need to update an election code that is grossly outdated and falls well short of the norm in modern American politics.
Since the passage of the Federal Election Campaign Act in 1971, candidates for federal elections have been required to disclose all campaign monies received from political action committees, committees within their respective parties and individuals donating in excess of $200. The Federal Election Commission maintains databases for each candidate during each election period, cataloging receipts and disbursements in easy-to-follow accounting statements.
In California, the passage of Proposition 9, otherwise known as the Political Reform Act of 1974, ensured that “receipts and expenditures in election campaigns … be fully and truthfully disclosed” in state elections.
Student election advisory councils obviously do not have the same regulatory and administrative power as their counterparts at the state and national levels, but candidate transparency in its most basic sense should be the absolute minimum required by any regulatory body. Students pay a nominal USAC fee each quarter and therefore have the right to know who financially supports officeholders and how they spend their campaign money.
In the past year, students have expressed a desire to know what financial and political ties student government leaders have to external organizations, both in the student government election and after it, during a judicial board hearing about an alleged conflict of interest involving two student representatives.
Expanding Election Code regulations would require USAC candidates to give students that transparency by reporting all revenues and expenses or risk facing serious allegations of campaign fraud.
Not having this system in place leads to widespread speculation as to who is funding student candidates, some of it valid and some not. But in order to even begin to sift through the finger-pointing, USAC candidates must first be held to acceptable disclosure regulations.
