Two major issues have voided the SGA election results, and the Elections Commission has decided to schedule a makeup election within the next week.
Student Government elections were held on April 1 and concluded at 6 p.m. The SGA Elections Commission met to discuss two major issues, then made their announcement late Tuesday night.
The SGA Elections Commission is comprised of Election Commissioner Jacob Everett, President Rick Drewery, Secretary General Allie Avery, and Speaker of the Senate Jamie Arnett.
SGA Adviser John Abel spoke on the two issues that hindered the election.
“The election commission has met, and we have two issues that are major issues. One is a potential disciplinary issue, which arose today. In that regard, that disciplinary action or non-action will fall to the Office of Student Conduct. The Office of Student Conduct will do an investigation; the Office of Student Conduct will then make a decision and that decision will affect the candidacy of those involved,” Abel said.
“For that reason, the Commission elected to withhold any results until that had been decided by Student Conduct. Instead of announcing an election and then having to change things or not change things, with that cloud, we needed to hold them.”
According to the SGA Constitution and election packet, candidates must be in good academic and disciplinary standing at the time of election and appointment, and during the term of office.
Abel then discussed a second issue that hindered the election.
“Now, in my opinion, a much bigger issue … this morning we had some technical glitches in the voting system. I worked with IT throughout the day, and they felt they were resolved,” Abel said.
“I have reviewed the results; I am the only one who has reviewed the results. No one else has reviewed the results. I can tell you based upon the results that students did not see the ballot.”
Abel said that students were able to see certain parts of the ballot, such as the side for the Executive Council and Judicial Branch. However, the part of the ballot that was supposed to include the senators was not functioning.
“IT felt that it was [working] because they were seeing people were getting logged in and votes were being cast. But, once we saw the results, the turnout in the results in the Executive side are about what you would expect them to be. The results on the other side are almost nothing,” Abel said. “We had one college that had like five votes … So, that tells me there was a severe technical failure.“
While the Election Commission recognized that most students were able to vote for the Executive Council and Judicial Branch candidates, they believed it to be unfair to the students to simply re-vote on just the senators.
“In my mind that opens it up to the question ‘if you can’t say that one side of the ballot is right, how can you say that the other side is right?’” Abel said.
“The Elections Commission decided that we need to have a makeup election. The election did not get broadcast to students. Students did not get the option to see the ballot. The first line of business will be to work with IT to figure out the glitch and then establish a date to have a makeup election. I can’t certify these results because I know students did not see the ballot,” Abel said. “It’s my duty to certify this election was done fairly and properly as the adviser of Student Government, and I can’t do that with looking at what happened on the senator side.”
Both The Real Deal Party Presidential candidate John Domanski and YOUniversity Party Presidential candidate Bryan Swayze were displeased with the idea of holding makeup elections because the election budgets have been fully utilized. Abel said that the Election Commission will meet to determine if additional funding can be added to the budgets, and that there is a clause in the election packet that allows for special rules to be made for special circumstances.
Finances weren’t the only issues with holding a makeup election. Concerns about the system were also voiced.
“We had a system we used for 10 years, but this is a new system. We can go to the backup system, and do it that way but I know that it works,” Abel said.
Abel says that the IT department is working to determine the cause of the issues. He is unsure when an answer will be made available. Abel says he will be requesting a formal statement from the IT Department on the underlying causes of the technical issues.
Abel says he wants to stick to the SGA Constitution and hold the new election within the next week. The Constitution requires that the elections be held within the first two weeks of April. At this time, the makeup election date has not been determined.
The Elections Commission also gave a formal statement on the matter.
“In regards to the 2014 Student Government Association Elections, it is the unanimous decision of the elections’ commission to withhold all electoral results in light of recent disciplinary events. The commission will reconvene after the Office of Student Conduct has released a formal decision in regards to the possible disciplinary infraction of potential Executive Committee candidates. It is, also, the commission’s unanimous decision to hold another election for there was a failure of the electronic voting system upon our adviser’s review of the election results. This is the unanimous decision of the Election’s Commission,” Drewery said.
