One day into election season, the first grievance has been filed against the student government’s Elections Board, alleging the board sabotaged a campaign when it removed 12 posters from the bulletin boards at the Heart of Campus.
ASUO Finance Coordinator Nick Hudson filed the grievance on Monday against the ASUO Elections Board for tearing down posters that the board said exceeded the number permitted by the campaign rules.
In a written response to the grievance, Elections Board Coordinator Ryan Coussens stated that the Daniels-DuFour campaign failed to comply with the Elections Board recommendation to remove the excess posters.
“The Elections Board absolutely rejects the statement of sabotage,” the response reads. Quoting rule 3.3, the Elections Board stated its authority to take action in preventing campaign violations.
“Although the Elections Board did remove all but four of their posters, we did not take this action out of sabotage, but proper enforcement of the Elections Board,” the statement reads.
Hudson, who is supporting Jacob Daniels for ASUO president and is dating vice presidential running mate Amy DuFour, helped put up the posters for their campaign.
According to the rules, campaigners are allowed to put up as many as four posters on each bulletin board around campus, increased from one during last year’s election season. Coussens said he tore down the extra posters from the two kiosks across from the EMU Amphitheater because they had more than one poster on each of the four-sided boards. Instead of 16 posts on each of the two kiosks, four on each side, Coussens left just one on each side.
“A kiosk I consider to be one bulletin board that has four directions,” Coussens said in response to the grievance, which will now be forwarded to the ASUO Constitution Court for a ruling.
Hudson said in his two-page explanation that the Daniels-DuFour campaign put up four posters on each side of the kiosks because that is what the rule states.
In an interview, Hudson said it’s common sense that each side is considered one board, and “anyone in their right mind would see those as four bulletin boards.”
Coussens’ interpretation of the rule that sets a limit of four posters per bulletin board “is inherently wrong because each side of the kiosk is considered as one bulletin board,” Hudson’s grievance read. Further, because the kiosks aren’t specifically mentioned in the elections rules, “one could argue that the kiosks are NOT a university building and are therefore not included in this rule,” the grievance stated.
“It was just a really stupid decision,” he said.
Hudson is asking the Constitution Court to replace the campaign posters in their previous positions “in order to prevent sabotage of the Jacob and Amy campaign.” They have photographs to show where the posters were placed, Hudson said.
He said the rules should have been clarified earlier if this was to be the Election Board’s interpretation of the kiosks, and it should have been sent out in an e-mail to all candidates, not just those that Coussens talked with.
The Elections Board said in the memo the definition was explained several weeks ago after one candidate inquired about the two kiosks.
Coussens said the kiosks have already caused problems with candidates and he has taken down several posters for other violations. On Monday afternoon, while handing out voter pamphlets, Coussens took down two of Dallas Brown and Emily McLain’s executive campaign posters because they were partially covering up other candidates’ posters, a violation of the elections rules.
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