Sergeant at Arms Oskar Ruiz brought legislation forth on Apr. 5 about Senate Presidential candidates that must obtain 75 and 500 signatures, respectively, during campaign.

Senate bill SB05-036 introduced by Ruiz partly states:

To provide the voting membership a larger number of candidates, which will ensure enough sophomores and freshmen are running to fulfill the one-third requirement.

The spirit and ideals of elections are to ensure that the democratic process is fulfilled to maintain a system of checks and balances with no complete power invested in one group or individal.

The action of raising the signatures count was more detrimental to the process and its is in the best interest of the ASCC and students of Cerritos College to reduce the number of signatures therefore, be it that the ASCC Bylaws be amended to read:

1.Senate candidates must obtain at least 75 signatures

2.Presidential candidates must obtain at least 500 signatures.

Senate Majority Leader Guillermo Tellez was quick to question the determination of the detrimental.

Holly Bogdanovich, director of students activities, said that the ASCC would like to have enough candidates to fill the seats “because last fall there were not enough and I don’t have the exact number of candidates that did run, but could provide that information at the next Senate meeting (on April 19).”

In other words, she said that the candidacy need to be “open in order to fill the Senate seats.”

However, Senator Alex Armendariz, question the 75 signatures that Senatorial candidates needed to run for a senate seat.

“The proposal states that only 75 signatures are need and if that number goes down than the candidates running with end up getting no signatures,” he said.

In reading the by for the Senate candidates Ruiz agreed that the 75 signatures was a small estimate.

“The students will be running for Senate will look at the 75 signatures instead,” he added, “and those small number of signatures will be an easier way for those candidates to get elected (into the ASCC Senate).”

Lastly, he added that there should be a better word for “detrimental” because of the large amount of signatures needed for the Presidential candidates and a small amount of signatures for the Senatorial candidates.

A revised Bylaw in the Senate bill SB05-036 will be voted on April 19.