This is one of those issues that is so fundamentally dumb you just can’t say enough bad things about it.

We have this “campaign zone” for the Government of the Student Body elections. According to the rules, candidates can only campaign within this on-campus zone. And if they don’t — if they forget to take off their buttons before heading to the bar — they get fined.

The zone, as it’s called, includes university-owned property, the Union and the interior of greek houses. That’s it. Oh, and all the campaign stuff that candidates distribute in the zone must first be stamped by the election commissioner. That’s all the posters, buttons and business cards, among other stuff.

First, it’s a crock.

Second, it’s illegal.

Candidates Brad Lozan and Todd Swanson found this out first-hand. Lozan was fined $50 because one of his posters was found in Campustown. Swanson was fined $100 because some of his supporters, people he in theory may not have even known, wore his buttons when they went to the bar.

You see, we’ve got this little thing called the First Amendment. It says nobody can ax free speech, especially free political speech, of all things.

Ponder this: Daily Opinion Editor John Mullen could stand on the corner of Welch and Lincoln Way and tell people to pick up the Daily. But GSB Candidate John Mullen — if there were one — would owe $100 in fines if he asked people to vote for him at the same location.

You simply should not, and legally cannot, do that.

For God’s sake, this is so basic. If there were ever a legal challenge to these rules, they’d fall like an Iowa State student on ice.

What these rules do is essentially restrict the kind of speech that the First Amendment was designed to protect. Telling someone, especially a political candidate, what he or she can and can’t say and where he or she can and can’t say it goes against the very foundation of our government.

Students should be torqued.

The rules should be changed.