Judiciary committee fails proposed bill to limit SG campaign spending

The UF Student Government Judiciary Committee failed to allow a bill reforming how political parties spend money during elections to be heard by Student Senate.

Access Party President Michael Russel and Access Treasurer Edward Zambrano, who helped write the bill, wanted to place limits on how much money parties can spend based on the number of candidates for each party.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Ben Weiner argued placing limits on spending could violate the First Amendment.

“If you’re limiting the spending, then you’re limiting speech,” he said. “Then we get into tricky areas.”

The failed bill proposed to limit candidates for Student Body president and vice president to spending $1,500 each, candidates for treasurer to spending $750 and candidates for senator or other offices to spending $150. Although no restrictions were placed on campaign donations in the proposed bill, the amount of money parties could spend correlated to how many candidates they had.

Russel argued other schools in the Southeastern Conference have limits on party spending.

“We’re just trying to limit it so students have an easier time getting into Student Government,” Russel said.

Although the bill failed, he said the meeting was productive.

When asked if other schools with spending limits violate the U.S. Constitution, members of the Judiciary Committee said yes, but only if the schools had provisions stating that their student government follows federal constitutions, as UF’s government does.