This year’s student groups are already looking ahead to next year as they establish budgets and search for funding. Those student groups petitioning to be on April’s special fees ballot began the process of acquiring student signatures last week, and since then, have experienced a setback.

Broken links preventing students from viewing detailed budgets caused the Elections Commission to temporarily shut down the petitions Web site for reasons of constitutionality — technically, all students signing a petition must have the opportunity to read not only the dollar amount requested, but also the detailed budget. Petitions signed before links were fixed have been invalidated, forcing the nine student groups affected to completely restart their process of collecting signatures. In some cases, groups forfeited over a quarter of the signatures needed.

To help atone for the mistake, the Elections Commissar has committed to writing emails to ask those students whose signatures were invalidated to re-sign. But affected groups worry about a low return rate, which may hurt their efforts to earn a spot on the ballot. In any case, the ASSU’s solution of punting the consequences of its own oversight onto students groups and the student body is troubling.

At the very least, the Elections Commission should consider extending the Mar. 7 deadline to compensate for the lost signatures. The ostensible reasoning against such an action is an effort to curtail the “spam” that floods student in-boxes in the form of petition requests. But once student groups fulfill their signature quotas, they can stop these online pleas. As a result, any extension would see emails only from groups who have not yet met their requirement, perhaps as the result of the ASSU’s mistake.

Also, the Election Commission and ASSU Constitution’s focus on the budget of petitioning student groups is perplexing. Even when the rare student actually does take the time to peruse the proposed budgets, that student may not be able to really learn anything from them. Breakdowns in line items are meaningless to readers unfamiliar with the typical costs of things like honoraria, facility and event labor. Throwing out online signatures because some students did not get the chance to look at budgets they probably would have ignored — or failed to understand upon reading — is a shame for groups that now must accumulate them again.

While this most recent controversy focuses on budget links, the petitions Web site inexplicably lacks another, more important barometer. Besides the name, total budget and contact information, the Web site does not detail crucial information about the group itself. Each petition page should display the group’s mission statement and a brief summary of its budget proposals. In effect, student groups should make pitches to the student body for signatures. Currently, some groups do justify their needs in the formal budgets, but text on the page itself rather than mere links would force students to consider the merits of the petition as opposed to just signing off. This information seems many times more important than obscure budget details, yet its absence does not require the dumping of thousands of signatures.

Yet, the Editorial Board’s concern about the special fees process is unfortunately more than just procedural. Some of the process’ broader issues are worth reviewing as well. Most significantly, in the current process, students also have no way of objecting to just a portion of a student group’s proposed budget or voting for a reduced budget. As a result, students caught supporting a group, but not its entire proposed budget, find themselves in a quandary. Though line item by line item voting is impractical, the ASSU should re-package some budgets to allow students the option of voting for more debatable budget proposals.

Additionally, student groups that reach the ballot nearly always succeed in gaining special fees. This relative ease of passage during the election heightens the importance of the petition process. Therefore, students signing petitions now should consider the consequences of their signatures longer than just the mere seconds necessary to sign.

Active student groups are an essential part of any campus, and it is no secret that active student groups require money. Petitions occurring now and voting in April will determine the distribution of a large amount of money to student groups. With such sums of money and the viability of several student groups on the line, Stanford should have a process that reflects its importance in both policy and implementation.