Notice to GSB candidates: Watch out where you campaign – there may be a polling place lurking nearby.

The Government of the Student Body election code prohibits active campaigning within 25 feet of any operating polling places during the election, which begins at 12:01 a.m. Friday and concludes 11:59 p.m. Monday. The election commission has the authority to fine candidates violating this rule a minimum of $25.

Most local, state and federal elections have similar prohibitions on campaigning near polling places, so why shouldn’t the GSB election?

Because this isn’t a normal election. The polling place isn’t a specific location. It is Vote.iastate.edu. Most people would assume that trying to draw a circle with a 25 foot radius around a Web site that doesn’t exist in any physical sense is a futile endeavor.

But the election code doesn’t shy away from complicated metaphysical questions, and neither will this year’s GSB election commission. Although the election code admits that “any Internet-enabled computer may be used” for voting, it nevertheless defines a “polling place” as any campus, residence hall or Greek community computer lab, and gives the election commission the authority to regulate campaigning within those spheres.

Yet interpreting the election code has been no small task. In an emergency meeting Monday, GSB candidates and election commissioners debated the definition of “lab” (a group of three or more computers), whether groups of laptops constitute a lab (they don’t) and whether the 25-foot prohibition extends to the areas above or below a computer lab (it doesn’t).

It was also pointed out that write-in candidates, although encouraged to follow the same rules, cannot be fined for violations and their elections cannot be invalidated for failure to comply.

Sigh.

It’s time to admit that the 25-foot rule is outdated and incompatible with online elections, to acknowledge that enforcement of the rule will be by necessity haphazard and selective, to concede that clarifying what constitutes the boundaries of a computer lab is too complicated and time-consuming to be worthwhile and to recognize that capricious campaign regulations only give potential candidates the incentive to run write-in campaigns free from the threat of fines.

The commission is taking the opposite path, stating that “we are uncomfortable with the fact that campaigning off-campus is not regulated or included in the Election Code and is currently outside our reach of policing.” That might be an excellent idea if the GSB elections were characterized by vigorous campaigning and cutthroat competition. But the problem this year and in years past is not that students are bombarded with too much election information, but too little.

Until that situation changes, less regulation – not more – is needed.