With ASMSU elections a day away, the student government is once again having trouble finding enough people to fill its open seats.
And ASMSU members said their election code could be the cause of the problem.
History shows that not many students apply for student government seats, and candidates running have no problem getting elected because of the lack of competition.
This year, the Academic Assembly has 13 seats still open, and the Student Assembly, which has two more seats than 2003, has 17 open.
Last year, of 26 seats open on the Academic Assembly, nine were filled. And, of 30 seats available on the Student Assembly, 12 were filled.
A lack of candidates has been a problem for about 25 years, ASMSU officials estimated.
Academic Assembly Internal Vice Chairperson Jessica Hancock said the problem this year and in past years is partly because many candidates are invalidated from running because of discrepancies within their application.
ASMSU's election code states that undergraduates interested in running for a seat on either of the assemblies need 30 signatures endorsing their candidacy from students in their college.
"The problem is a lot of people don't have 30 signatures from people in their college," Hancock said.
She added that students who endorse a candidate sometimes think they are a part of one college, but the registrar's office categorizes them under a different college. This results in signatures not counting.
Another problem is the candidates who apply for a seat aren't aware of which majors are a part of the college they are running for.
Of 40 candidates running for ASMSU seats, 10 were invalidated as a result of inaccurate signatures.
Hancock said the election code is in the process of being revised so that undergraduates can better understand which signatures, by major, candidates can retrieve from students in their college.
But Student Assembly Internal Vice Chairperson Patricia Smith said the revision Hancock spoke of is not "in a draft as of yet."
"I would definitely be in favor of cleaning up the language," she said. "(For example), making it clear that someone who is not an education major but getting a teacher's certificate from the College of Education is not able to vote in the College of Education."
But the open seats still have a chance to be filled.
On election day, undergraduates can log onto the election Web site - http://studentelections.msu.edu - to include themselves as a write-in candidate.
In order to be approved by an ASMSU elections commission, the write-in candidate must receive 30 votes plus additional votes required to beat other candidates they run against, Smith said.
But Paul Harmon, ASMSU association director and elections commission chairperson, said he didn't think a candidate needed the 30 votes to qualify. He added, however, that the election code is not in its best form.
"To have a successful election, you need to have a code in place," he said. "And we do realize we do have issues with our codes."
