After a mess of grievances and decisions muddying the campaign trail, the ASUO general election has started again — for the third time this year. Voting during the election, which begins today and ends at 5 p.m. Wednesday, will be done on a completely clean slate. Any votes cast for ballot measures during the two days of voting last term have been discarded, ASUO Elections Coordinator Shantell Rice confirmed.
The election comes after a series of ASUO Constitution Court decisions overturned some of the decisions made by the ASUO Elections Board. While handling the numerous grievances, the court questioned how the board dealt with the complaints before it during the primary election. In both hearings involving ASUO Executive hopefuls Bret Jacobson and Matt Cook, and in the case of Student Senate candidate Steven Lockfield, the court’s decisions clashed with the board’s decisions, leading to a confusing game of musical chairs that removed candidates from the ballot and then put them back on again.
In response to a grievance filed by former vice presidential candidate Jeff Oliver, the board disqualified Jacobson and Cook after their campaign distributed fliers in the University residence halls.
But Jacobson filed for an injunction, which led the court to halt the general election just before it was slated to begin March 5. After a March 16 hearing, the court put Jacobson and Cook back on the ballot, ruling the pair’s due process had been violated because the board never officially notified them of the grievance.
The board also removed Lockfield’s name from the ballot three hours before voting ended because his major did not match the senate position he was running for, Lockfield said. Again, the court decided in favor of the candidate, ruling that Lockfield should have another chance to run in the general election because the board did not tell him of the error until just before the polls closed.
But Justice Alan Tauber said some of the problems with the Elections Board’s decisions stemmed from the short amount of time it had to review the rules. He said that normally the ASUO president appoints board members by November, but this year the positions were not filled until January.
“I think given the proper amount of time, a lot of problems could have been avoided, ” he said. “Things got started so late.”
But ASUO President Jay Breslow said the late appointments resulted from the first Elections Board coordinator’s resignation in the middle of fall term. He added that all members of the first Elections Board, which was assembled under Rice, had previous involvement with the ASUO. Because of their involvement, Breslow said, all board members were familiar with the rules, which he said were followed.
“We hired a really experienced Elections Board,” he said. “And I didn’t think the board broke any rules.”
The board itself has undergone its own version of musical chairs, as two members graduated at the end of winter term and another resigned after the primary election. Only two members from the original board remain to deal with winter term’s election remnants and this week’s final round of voting.
Tauber said there were also some problems with election rules, which the court ordered to be changed in its decision on Lockfield’s grievance.
One of Jacobson and Cook’s main arguments was that they heard about their grievance from the Emerald — not from the board. But no current rule requires that the subject of a grievance receive a copy of the complaint, Tauber said.
“It’s possible for a grievance to be filed against the subjects, have a hearing held, and remove them from the ballot without them even knowing,” Tauber said. “That doesn’t seem right.”
Matt Swanson, former Elections Board office manager, said that although it was good the court addressed this issue and set a precedent for next year, he still believes Jacobson and Cook were already aware of the grievance.
“I find it hard to believe that they were completely in the dark,” he said.
Rice said that as far as the board was concerned, proper decisions were made. Election delays had nothing to with lack of time or knowledge, and it was the late grievances that slowed down the election process, she said.
“Some things were out of our control and made things just not as smooth as they could have been,” she said.
But Lockfield argued that if board members knew the rules, he would have been notified of the problem with his application earlier. Lockfield ran for the social sciences senate seat, but was disqualified because his history major falls under arts and letters, not social sciences. Lockfield said he did not learn of his disqualification until he went to vote for himself and did not see his name on the ballot.
“I would have hoped they would’ve looked through my application and put two and two together, and perhaps I would have had time to change the problem,” he said. ” I don’t think they knew their own rules … And it’s their duty to safeguard against errors like these.”
Jacobson said that although he believes the board did make some mistakes due to the late appointments of its members, the court overturned many of those decisions and the election will resume without any more problems.
“We don’t really blame anyone specifically because we know that they had a huge job to do,” he said. ” They made a few mistakes, but in the long run the court corrected those and things should run smoothly from here on out.”