Such was the situation Wednesday night, when motions were made to validate an election nullified 24 hours earlier.

It fell upon ASG's parliamentary body — Rules Chairman Steve Spaulding, Speaker of the Senate Ben Patterson and Secretary/Parliamentarian Richard Caldarone — to make a pivotal choice: Law or Justice.

Law would have been to deny the motions, which were clearly unconstitutional. Justice would have been to recognize that an election reportedly decided by hundreds of votes couldn't have been tainted by the presence of a handful of illegal graduate votes.

They chose Law, and a confused electorate has damned them.

Had they chosen Justice, the electorate would have damned them then, too.

Spaulding, you will recall, earned our respect a week ago when, as election judge, he resigned to protest the nepotism Senate displayed toward presidential candidate Karyn Bass.

But here is the rub: Spaulding is an open supporter of Kim Montgomery, a Bass opponent. After his resignation, he put some of her fliers on his door.

Spaulding, who says he did not know any results, has my respect for following the letter of the law. However, I question how he, with such an allegiance to one of the candidates, can be impartial in deciding the fate of an election.

He could be Moses incarnate, but he still has a conflict of interest.

My faith in him aside, I just wish that students were as interested as Spaulding is conflicted.

It is easy to say that the election fiasco has distracted the electorate from the major issues. That is, it would be easy if there actually were issues.

Until Tuesday, the only newsworthy issue of the campaign had to do with fliers. Does this embarrass anyone else?

At best, fliers merely make campus litter a little more colorful.

At worst, they reduce the election to a slogan contest. A riddle: What is the difference between Bass' "Students First" and Evil Dave Sheldon's "S*CK IT"?

Sheldon's makes sense and has meaning.

I've watched five elections at three universities. Each time, silly games and empty promises. The tragedy, though, is that not much changes after graduation. The sludge that gets slopped in Norris 2E/F isn't much different from the sludge that gets slopped at City Hall.

But elsewhere, it's not just egos and feelings that get hurt. In the real world, real people cry and real people die by the wicked ways of their elected officials.

What is the solution? I have two radical proposals.

No more fliers. Candidates must resort to old-fashioned campaigning: pressing the flesh, debating in public, and trying to manipulate The Daily.

Write-in candidates only. If voters can't remember who they want to vote for, do we want them voting in the first place?

Only then will we have clean, respected campaigns. Only then will the victor be the best candidate, not the person with the most creative public relations or the most influential connections.

-Luke Seemann is a Medill senior. He can be reached at [email protected].

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