VP Finance candidate Linda Huang has been given a penalty by the Elections Committee for using an address list of AMS club treasurers, which she has special access to because of her role as Associate VP Finance, to solicit support.
News of Huang’s violation originally broke on Reddit, when a throwaway account complained that they used that email for “information relevant to handling the financial activities of my club,” instead of solicitations from VP Finance candidates.
“Her email is even more irrelevant as treasurers are reappointed every year so the person interacting with the VP Finance next year is most likely not the treasurer this year,” the user wrote.
Other Redditors confirmed that Huang’s emails were sent to accounts that they had provided to the AMS but are not listed on any public platforms or email lists. Huang later confirmed that she had mistakenly used a private email list that she thought was available through Clubhouse, and has since published a response in the same Reddit post.
“It turns out the list I was looking at was used in my portfolio as reference material for our finance commissioner,” said Huang.
“I made a huge mistake with using a list that wasn’t publicly available.”
Under AMS Code article IX A 8(a), candidates are prohibited from using “the materials or resources of the Executive, the Commissions, the other branches of the Society’s student government.” This includes the internal email list in question, which Huang was able to only access through her AMS position.
The AMS Elections committee confirmed in a Facebook post that Huang will face penalties for using unapproved campaign emails, sending mass emails without informing the committee and using AMS resources for campaign purposes.
In her emails, Huang addressed recipients by name, informing them or her nomination and encouraged them to invite her to upcoming executive meetings and to submit an endorsement. While generic “blast emails” are an accepted form of campaigning under AMS Code article IX A 7 e iv), those emails are “subject to restrictions put in place by the Elections Committee,” which doesn’t allow targeted emails that include the recipient’s name and position.
Huang said the difference between the two was unclear.
“I guess I didn’t understand the difference between a mass email with everyone’s name blankly carbon copied versus sending an email directly to one person, but it having the same content,” she said. Huang also noted that sending similar messages via Facebook was usually permitted.
Under this year’s election handbook, candidates are also prohibited from emailing third-party institutions without executive permission from that society, and all “mass” campaign emails should have been cc’d to an AMS Elections account.
While the email was sent from Huang’s UBC account, the signature identified her as the Associate VP Finance and included a link to her campaign website. She also originally listed her AMS email address on the contact page of the same site, something she has since amended.
“I understand that should not be used as a regular content email, so I have taken that down,” said Huang.
In a following message, Huang pointed out that the Elections Committee had previously approved her website, including that contact page with her AMS email on it — the committee only asked her to take it down after the news of the Reddit post.
Huang is the second VP Finance candidate to receive reprimand from the Elections Committee in two days, following a warning issued to Adam Forsgren on Monday. In both cases, offenders attempted to leverage resources available to them through their current positions in the AMS Finance office.
As punishment for her violations, Linda and her campaign team are forced to suspend campaigning for 24 hours, from using mass-emails for the rest of the campaign and have a $150 cut in their campaign budget. The ban on campaigning includes Huang’s website, which is currently down.
For her part, Huang acknowledged the mistake and said she aims to be more careful as she continues her campaign.
“A lot of this [campaigning] is very new to me,” said Huang. “Moving forward, I will be sure to be much more diligent.”