Monday, April 09, 2007
Another charge sheet
Here's a more serious one.
Vishal Gupta has filed a charge sheet that says that the fixed order of ballot propositions violates equal protection. See if you can figure out why. (Hint: The Student Life and Lower Sproul fees come last.) He wants the order randomized.
This is, of course, bullshit.
1) The equal protection applies to proponents and opponents of particular measures. There is no basis for extending it to proponents and opponents between measures, especially when there are no conflicting referenda (where the one with the most votes would void part of the other).
2) Randomizing the order is similarly bullshit, since candidates, who do have equal protection with respect to each other, don't even get that randomized order. (They probably should, by the way)
3) His alternative remedy of reversing the order of the ballot questions on half the ballot makes more sense, but still leaves the poor fee referenda in the middle with the unenviable position of always following another fee referenda.
Still, he may win the case if nobody bothers to argue against it. Check out this quote:
I argue that this violates the clause of Equal Protection in the ASUC By-laws because the order does not change and the psychological influence placed on one fixed order puts the later propositions at a disadvantage. I do not have the opportunity under the time constraints to show the exact psychological effect, but I do know that statistically, this effect exists, and it does not afford equal opportunity for each proposition on the ballot. "I can totally prove it, I just don't have the time."
That said, there's no problem with his remedy in a policy sense (i.e. maybe a By-Law should be written to that effect). The more legitimate one, in my opinion, is for the referenda to be on the ballot in the order that they were placed there.. But for the Judicial Council to unilaterally declare this policy without any real grounds in the equal protection right would definitely be the kind of "Judicial Activism" that always seems to swing in favor of those in office.
Hey, dude! You were in the Senate a while ago, weren't you? Why didn't you fix it when it made sense to? Or does having sensible laws only matter when you think they might negatively affect you, and never before?
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