Iowa State Daily Editorial Board: Troy McCullough, Tim Davis, Jennifer Holland, Kathleen Carlson and Jenny Hykes.

Twenty-one GSB Senate candidates and one presidential slate have been asked to attend disciplinary hearings for violating elections codes by not turning over their campaign budgets in a timely fashion and not including all costs on their budgets.

Sounds ominous, doesn’t it? What kind of sneaky political maneuvering was done so that some corrupt, power-hungry ISU student could plug themselves into the political machine that is GSB? And what insidious plot did President-elect Adam Gold have in mind when, according to an article in the April 12 issue of the Daily, he falsified his budget?

Well, not much, really.

Despite the fact that the sound of our elected representatives being guilty of falsifying their campaign budgets hints at political debauchery, the truth is that there really isn’t much to be made of in this situation. These senators and executives-elect are really guilty of very little, which in most cases boil down to minor oversights and mix-ups in communication. In the instance of President-elect Gold, he was fined $100 because he didn’t include the cost of transporting voters to and from the Memorial Union.

Gold said he was unaware of the requirement to include this in his budget report, saying, “It was an oversight. There was no intentional means here. We didn’t know about the requirement.”

With complaints from at least one newly-elected senator that the wording of the rules regarding campaign budgets was unclear, we’re more than inclined to believe him.

Not exactly Watergate, is it folks? Perhaps we are making too much of this issue, but the question must be raised: what is the good of fining these candidates? While we can appreciate the need of the election committee to ensure that the campaigns are run in an ethical and fair manner, are these fines really necessary?

It is extremely rare when a campaign infraction is little more than an oversight or a miscommunication, so is it really necessary to drag these candidates to disciplinary hearings for what even election commissioner Trish Sandahl has admitted are “just minor charges.” As a source of deterrence, the disciplinary hearings and fines have proven to do little more than drain a student’s wallet. After every annual election there are a new batch of equally insignificant “violations” to be dealt with.

Is there a better way to ensure a fair campaign without these minor trifles? We hope so.