Petitioning
Petitioning overview
All candidates and slates and many Special Fee groups must petition to get on the ballot for the ASSU Election in Spring Quarter.
For candidates
The petition process ensures that only those candidates on the ballot have shown some level of commitment. It's generally not, and not intended to be, a significant hurdle for prospective candidates. You should use this time to meet other people who are interested in running, acquaint yourself with campus issues, and get comfortable discussing them with other students.
Starting to collect signatures, or even submitting a complete petition, does not obligate you to run; you can withdraw at any time by contacting the Elections Commission. You can also start collecting signatures whenever, just as long as you have them in by the deadline. In past years, many successful candidates did not start petitioning until a few days before the deadline.
For Special Fee groups
Petitioning ensures that Special Fee requests on the ballot are in line with what students' wants, giving students more input into the process than the all-or-nothing, yes-or-no vote they have on the ballot. It's also an opportunity for you to explain to students what your group does and how your group will use the fee request to benefit campus.
Deadline
The petition deadline is March 9 at 5 PM. Within a week after the deadline, the Elections Commission will verify all petitions and post the results publicly on this site.
How to petition
Candidates, slates, and Special Fees have two options: petitioning online through a website provided by the ASSU Elections Commission, or petitioning on paper with pre-approved forms. See more information in our guidelines document.
» Petitions Guidelines (docx)
Candidate/slate online petitions
You can start a petition at the Voter Guide petition site (managed by the Elections Commission) and collect signatures online. Once you sign up, you'll be given an address where people can go to sign your petition.
If you need to change any of the information you entered when you created the petition, such as your slate name, etc., contact us. You can just create another petition with the correct info yourself if you haven't gathered many signatures yet. If you want to change the members of your slate, you have to toss out all the signatures on your previous slate and start over. If you would like your petition to remain private, accessible only to those who have the link and not listed in the public list of open petitions, email us before creating the petition.
Candidate/slate paper petitions
If you want to design your own paper petitions (or any petition materials besides the pre-approved Voter Guide website), send it to us for approval before collecting signatures; signatures may be considered invalid otherwise. Sample petitions are provided below.
Special Fee petitions
Please ensure you read the Special Fees information guides (see Budget on page 2) to learn about the six pieces of information that must be included in every petition distributed.
To start petitioning, you must send those six pieces of information to the Elections Commission. We will verify the information you provide us, verify that you have registered a Declaration of Intent, and then we're required to seek the advice of the ASSU Financial Manager and the Senate/GSC on the form (not content) of your petition, which could take up to 24 hours. This is separate from seeking the Appropriations/Funding Committees' recommendations and only concerns whether the required information as described above is included. This step also ensures that all technical objections to the form of your petition come out now, rather than after you have begun petitioning (at which point you would have to start over with zero signatures if you needed to change the petition). If no technical objections are raised now, then the budget and petition is presumed to be sound and prepared in good faith, and your group may begin petitioning.
If you are petitioning with two separate budgets, signatures on each petition are counted separately. You may not count signatures on one petition toward another, even if they are very similar. You also can't change your petition budget after you've begun petitioning without removing all of the signatures up to that point.
When can a Special Fees group start petitioning?
If you're not seeking Senate/GSC approval, you can start whenever, as long as your petition has been approved by us (see above).
If you are seeking Senate/GSC approval (to petition for only 10% or to avoid having to petition), then you have to wait until they've approved your budget to begin. Usually, approval by the full Senate is a formality once a funding request has been approved by the Appropriations Committee. By passing the Senate Approps Committee, you've already passed a higher level of scrutiny than the full Senate is likely to give. However, on the off chance that the full Senate does reject a group that the Approps Committee approved (unlikely and unprecedented, but it's their vote), then the signatures on the petition won't count. So, you can either begin immediately, knowing you might have to start over (but you'd know who had already signed your petition, so you could email them personally to get them to re-sign), or you can wait until Tuesday night at 7pm when the full Senate meets (Nitery, 2nd floor) to be certain. We recommend you begin petitioning immediately after you get Approps approval instead of waiting for the full Senate approval.
Petition Requirements
| Position | # signatures |
|---|---|
| Undergraduate Senator | 100 undergrads |
| Undergraduate Class President slate | 100 undergrads |
| Executive | 200 students combined (grad + undergrad) |
| GSC candidate | No petition required |
| Special Fee | See Special Fees guidelines |
To be eligible for public financing, Executive slates must collect at least 300 signatures, including 100 undergrad signatures and 100 grad signatures, to demonstrate a broad base of support.
Valid signatures
For a signature to be valid, it must:
- be from a current Stanford student;
- not be gathered during class or in interference of a University function; and
- be collected on the Elections Commission petition site or an approved paper petition.
To comply with Residential Education's no-solicitation policy, if you petition door-to-door in a residence other than your own, we require that somebody who lives in that residence accompany you at all times. Any signatures collected in violation of this are invalid. If we receive complaints from students about door-to-door petitioning, we will forward them to ResEd.
Validation
The Elections Commission will verify that the signatures collected on your petitions are valid. You should collect more than the minimum required number in case some of your signatures are accidentally invalid.
Constitution and Joint Bylaws
The final authority on all matters is always the ASSU Constitution and Joint Bylaws.