Staff Report
The Bernalillo County Clerk's Office is making some exceptions for early voters at UNM.
The office modified its polling location rules because of constant pedestrian traffic in the Student Union Building.
Maggie Toulouse Oliver, Bernalillo County Clerk, said poll workers at all other early voting sites have been instructed to prohibit campaigning within 100 feet in all directions.
But since there is no way for poll workers on the third floor of the SUB to monitor the activities of students on the first and second floors, the rule will be altered for the UNM site, Toulouse Oliver said.
"Usually, the way we enforce it is that we enforce it from the door of the building, but considering the SUB is a public space that's open for so many other purposes during the day, we are going to consider it 100 feet from the door of the voting location," she said.
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Stephen Dinkel, president of the Lobo Conservatives, said he will hand out campaign shirts to students who have pledged to wear them around campus in support of Republican candidates.
Dinkel said he will advise the students to not wear their shirts on the third floor of the SUB.
"I was talking to the individual campaigns, and I told them that there is a plan to (wear them) during the early voting but that we were going to strictly follow the 100-feet rule perimeter," Dinkel said. "We came up with the consensus to not ... wear the shirts inside the SUB."
Toulouse Oliver said the 100-feet rule will not affect student political groups based in the SUB.
"If you have a student organization on the basement floor that has a sign up or whatever, they're not going to enforce that," Toulouse Oliver said. "What they are going to probably enforce - if anything - is the actively handing out of literature . but if someone is walking around in the SUB wearing a T-shirt that says McCain or Obama or whatever, they're not going to enforce that during polling hours as long as they're not up on the third floor."
Toulouse Oliver said poll workers at the UNM site will ask voters to refrain from discussing politics while waiting in line to vote.
"If you're standing in line and someone starts up a conversation with you about why Obama is good or why McCain is bad or why McCain is good, and if there are other people standing in line around you listening, that could be considered campaigning," Toulouse Oliver said. "That's why we ask for the political conversations to be kept mum."
