As ASUO Executive candidates Bret Jacobson and Matt Cook battle through the final day of the primary election, they must also defend against two attacks to remove them from the ballot.
Their campaign placed fliers outside residence hall doors earlier this week, and two separate but similar grievances allege the action broke elections and University Housing rules.
If the ASUO Elections Board agrees with the grievances, they would be automatically disqualified from the presidential race, according to elections rules.
But Jacobson said he and Cook reviewed the elections rules before they distributed about 100 fliers, and he believes the rules do not forbid him from continuing to do so.
One of Jacobson and Cook’s rivals, vice presidential candidate Jeff Oliver, filed the first grievance Tuesday, and Walton Complex resident assistant David Christensen filed the second today, but the issue actually began with another candidate.
Presidential candidate Eric Qualheim, an RA in Carson Hall, noticed fliers outside doors in his hall. He said he called Oliver’s running mate, Eric Bailey, who is an RA in the Hamilton Complex.
But Qualheim said he didn’t want to muddy the political waters by filing the grievance himself, and he figured Bailey and Oliver might file anyway.
Christensen said he filed his grievance after noticing Jacobson and Cook fliers in his hall and other halls in the complex when he went on rounds.
Elections Manager Emily Sedgwick is investigating the grievances and will report to the entire five-person board, which will then rule on the allegations.
Sedgwick said she hopes to report to the board later today. The primary election ends at 5 p.m. today.
Oliver and Christensen contend Jacobson and Cook broke an elections rule ensuring equal access to University facilities such as the residence halls.
They also said Jacobson and Cook broke housing department rules created this term by the Residence Hall Association, a group of students that can recommend policy to housing department administrators.
Oliver said University Housing adopted a RHA rule that candidates could place a poster in the common areas of the four complex lobbies, but not in the actual residence halls.
“RHA’s main concern is that the residence halls are people’s homes,” Oliver said. “You’ve got to respect that it’s their homes.”
Jacobson said he didn’t speak with Elections Board members before distributing, but he believes that as long as he didn’t slide fliers under doors, he did nothing wrong.
“At no time did we put fliers in people’s rooms,” Jacobson said. “This grievance is an abuse of the process.”
Residence halls are locked from the outside, and although a person could simply wait for someone to open the door and then gain access, Oliver said that would violate Housing’s trespassing rules.
Jacobson, who called the grievances “mudslinging,” said his campaign volunteers delivered the fliers, but he wasn’t sure how they gained access to the halls.
He added that his campaign wanted to target freshmen voters who might only know about Bailey and Oliver because Bailey is an RA.
Oliver said he would rather just talk to Jacobson to solve the problem, but the number of fliers distributed created too much damage to just receive a slap on the wrist.
“[Filing a grievance] is one of the last things we wanted to do,” Oliver said.