If Ilana spent only $630 on her campaign, I'll cut my dick off.

Several SA execs have told me in the past that the party charges over $2000 in "membership fees" and "campaign costs" to the party. This goes to flyers (only a fraction of which are declared to the ECC), pizza and food to bribe volunteers, the free Gatorade, etc. they have given to people at the RSF, t-shirts which are clearly not campaign material, buttons, and so on.

$2000 is, of course, more than the $1000 campaign spending limit. But the campaign spending regulations are so limited in scope, nothing that they've done is blatantly illegal. Just very immoral and telling of what exactly these people will go through to get themselves elected.

I'm also not including legal fees in these costs. Oren's campaign last year cost him a good $8000. Hope it was worth it - although, as expected, I certainly haven't seen him do all that much with the opportunity except hobnob with university administrators.

Don't think CalSERVE is too much better, by the way. They may charge their candidates legal limits, but they actually have alumni who give a shit enough to donate funds to the party.
 

Ilana also supported Beier for the District 7 race last year, who set a set a new spending record for Berkeley. It's all in the family.
 

Argh, more whining by Travis Garcia (in the article)! He needs to deal with the fact that people come together to form organizations so they can be more effective. Does he expect everyone to do everything on their own in the world? Argh.

People coming together to form an organization, is not an inherently bad thing. And their pooling their resources does not make for an uneven playing field. Travis Garcia or any other non-party candidate, could also have joined together with other like-minded people, formed a party, and pooled resources with them.

The objection by Ben to alumni donations makes more sense. That arguably DOES create an uneven playing field in the present day. However, I am still not that bothered by it ... Parties with history should be able to take advantage of it -- they have "earned" it by their past deeds and values ... Part of the benefit of a political party, whether in the ASUC or in the "real world", is the institutional memory it creates ... As long as spending outside of limits is not on promoting specific candidates but rather on promoting the organization, that makes total sense to me as something that is fair. I am not bothered that Student Action or CalSERVE does that, and I am not bothered that it is allowed by ASUC rules.

Now, some individual candidates are simply independently richer than other individual candidates, and that IS unfairness -- but, the article does not suggest that Travis Garcia is complaining about that. He just seems to be whining about parties again.

As for Eric Marshall's comment, I personally don't think Facebook fliers are that effective. They don't appear often enough.
 

I really don't care about alumni donations. Wherever the money comes from is mostly irrelevant.

The big issue is that campaign finance reform IS a joke and completely ineffective.

As much as CalSERVE complains about class-ism in higher education, they sure have no qualms making campaigning for executive office an activity limited to those who don't need to support themselves for a living while campaigning.

In the DC article, they are pretty cavalier about the fact that Van had $500 in official campaign expenses but potentially $2000 of actual expenses. It's hard to complain about financial access to education when you're dropping $2000 to be ASUC President.
 

Speaking of fee hypocrisy, I'm glad to see the Student Life Fee will be going into capable hands.

http://www.dailycal.org/sharticle.php?id=24516
 

"As much as CalSERVE complains about class-ism in higher education, they sure have no qualms making campaigning for executive office an activity limited to those who don't need to support themselves for a living while campaigning."

I'm not familiar with the internal workings of CalSERVE, but the Daily Cal article mentioned CalSERVE allowing candidates to be sponsored by an alum if they could not afford a fee.

I'm pretty sure CalSERVE has run many candidates who had to support themselves from working while in school, including, for example, maybe during the weekends of campaigning.

I still don't have a problem with pooling resources, which is all that is dsecribed in the Daily Cal article. It makes sense to me that a candidate who is listed as one of many on a flyer, shouldn't have the full cost of the flyer deducted against his campaign spending limit when he didn't pay for the full cost of the flyer. Travis Garcia could have done that too if he found enough other people who agreed with him, and wanted to run together with him -- but he didn't.

Organization, power in numbers, economies of scale, call it what you will, is not inherently bad. Three people acting together have more than three times the voice of one person, and rightly so.
 

You're still not getting me.

CalSERVE is spending $2000 on an exec campaign with a $1000 spending limit. Student Action is probably spending more.

This spending limit was put in place with the intent of making issues, not money, the difference in electability of candidates.

By blatantly violating this limit, CalSERVE is acting in a way counterproductive to that goal. It doesn't matter how they raise the money.

Collective action, power in numbers, economies of scale, etc. do not make the exploitation of the rules acceptable. All it does is encourage what CalSERVE says they are working to fight against: that the person (or group) with more money has the most ability to make the rules.

Please, Jim, tell me how that is not contributing to a definitively classist system.
 

I simply don't see it as exploitation of the rules, and don't see it as spending $2000 on an executive campaign. It's not "classist" any more than elections are in general.

25 people could have come together in the "Travis Garcia slate", each donated $100, and done much the same thing.
 

"issues, not money"

you cant separate the two--money allows you to spread your issues--the finance limits are wrong
 

Last time I ran for ASUC Davis senate I spent $1.74 (I needed staples to put up the free flyers I was allowed) and got 76% of the number of votes it would have taken to get elected. Aren't they lucky I didn't put more effort and buy a second batch of staples!!
 

OK Jim. You keep bringing this back to collective action. This is not a collective action issue. Let me break it down very simply.

1) The ASUC has a set of rules for elections that attempt to limit the amount of money spent on campaigns.
2) These limits act to make issues more important than money. They try to level the playing field so that the best idea, not the strongest voice, is recognized.
3) The limit for executive races is $1000.
4) Van, agents of Van, and party officials working on Van's behalf spent $2000 on his campaign.
5) $2000 is more than $1000, violating the intended spending limit.
6) By violating the intended spending limits, Van and CalSERVE are acting in a way that puts the importance of money in front of the importance of issues.
7) This is classist and exclusionary, making leadership opportunities in the ASUC limited to those with exceptional financial privelege.
8) By being classist and exclusionary, CalSERVE is acting hypocritically to their overall philosopy and their campaign platforms.

Once again, no matter how the money is raised, whether it be through collective action or drug money, the point is the amount of money that is spent.
 

Our fundamental disagreement is that what you call spending $2000 on his campaign is NOT really spending $2000 on "his" campaign.

It is spent on the campaign for him and for senators whose lit his name appears on.

I see absolutely no reason why spending on a senate candidate's lit should all count totally as spending on an executive race. So I am not just talking about how the money is raised, but also agreeing with how the rules interpret how money is spent.

We are not misunderstanding each other, we are just disagreeing whether this raises an unfair barrier to other candidates.

I do not see that as violating the spirit of the spending limit as you do. It is absolutely a matter of collective action as it is made possible through people coming together to form a slate. Everyone has a roughly equal opportunity to form such a slate.
 

The rules explicitly state that if you have other names on a flyer or any other sort of advertising medium, that the cost can be split between the maximum limits of the candidates participating.

Yes, this inherently gives an advantage to group of people who aggregate around a "common cause," which automatically creates a pseudo-oligarchy.

It will almost always be a majority amongst those running for office who have greater sway, as opposed to the majority of the voters, simply due to the way elections work. People tend to vote for whoever's name they see most often.

Those wise enough to examine the actual issues each individual represent, are also wise enough to know not to waste their vote on an independent candidate. Similar to how vote splitting occurs at the national level, having multiple parties or individuals supporting similar causes actually lowers the success probability of that cause since voters will naturally be split between the two entities, while the potentially minority cause will win out due to unity.
 

Uh ohs! Somebody doesn't know how the transferable vote works! There's a reason parties run a slate of a bunch of people for Senate and don't lose due to "vote-splitting."