The Minnesota Student Association is debating the existing practice of allowing student-group endorsements on its ballots, and there are good reasons it shouldn’t.

By allowing endorsements on ballots, MSA is supporting an unfair system. The existing advantage of incumbent candidates, along with endorsements, makes it more difficult for newer, perhaps more qualified candidates to find their way into student government. The policy also encourages busy students to be lazy voters by providing basic information based on affiliations and not necessarily substance.

Elimination of endorsements on ballots is not meant to eliminate all endorsement of candidates. Candidates would be able to organize with various groups via listserv, fliers and all other means of campaigning excluding the endorsement on the ballot.

A similitude can be drawn between the tactlessness politicking at polls and the endorsement of candidates on ballots. Endorsements allow candidates to subvert rules that prohibit campaigning at polls.

Today’s students are the future of this country, and just as it is careless to vote based on party lines in state and national elections, it is careless to vote without candidate awareness. More steps are needed in the voting process; the current process makes lazy voting easier by providing easy information.

Elimination of endorsements on ballots will help create an informed student body willing to do their own research on candidates. This practice would also help develop a curious citizenry better able to vote in elections of a grander scale.