Members of the Student Association are making changes to the executive board election process to avoid the many recounts and runoff elections that occurred last year.

“Our system has been in place for a while and we’ve noticed a lot of problems with it,” SA President Adam Amit said. “We thought outside the box to see how we can improve the system.”

Elections Committee chair Karen GalÃ.án has outlined several specific changes, as well as new additions, to the SA elections system.

The elections board requires that candidates hand in all their receipts for purchases made toward their campaign, but Gal√É.√°n said there was no check on the candidates’ honesty because there were no rules governing how the receipts should be handed in.

“We kept finding that candidates weren’t honest and didn’t have to be,” Gal√É.√°n said. “Now we require itemized receipts and vendor contact information for verification.”

Other changes made to the elections process include clarifying who is considered a member of the elections committee and defining the responsibilities of committee members more precisely. Regulations and rules for board members who are poll-sitting were cleared up as well to avoid problems that occurred in the past, she said.

Last year, the SA judicial board found that Dickinson Community voters had their names crossed off of a voting roster instead of, as the SA’s bylaws prescribe, having the voters themselves sign the roster. All 256 Dickinson votes were thrown out.

Campaign spending will also work differently for the upcoming election.

“We also increased the amount that candidates could spend to $80, from $60,” Gal√É.√°n said. “We almost took the spending cap off to give candidates more options, but we also want the elections to be fair. A candidate that has more money at their disposal would be able to out-spend the competition.”

Another event that the elections committee has reorganized is “sweeps,” an event where class councils can meet the candidates all in one spot. This will replace the previous system where each individual candidate had to travel to all communities in the same night.

“Sweeps are a ‘meet the candidates’ opportunity given to the members of the Student Association through their communities [or] Off Campus College Council,” Gal√É.√°n said. “It used to be that candidates had to walk from one community to the other all in one night! It took a little over four hours because the timing was never right. Either we got to a community too early and had to wait on a group of candidates to finish, or too late and the community members were there waiting.”

Sweeps will now be held in the Lecture Hall, she said. Each community will be designated a room and the candidates will rotate among them.

One final change the SA is working on is the Instant Runoff Vote (IRV), where students who vote will be given a second choice — so that in the event that their desired candidate does not attain 40 percent of the vote, they will still have a say in who gets elected without a runoff election. This program is still in its planning stages and will likely not be seen in use until the 2011 elections.

The SA elections are set to be held March 10 and 11. Sweeps will be held March 3 in the Lecture Hall at 9 p.m.