By Eliana Morales & Kyla Wetmore
On Feb. 26, Student Association (SA) Senate called an emergency meeting to discuss issues with last week’s election. On Feb. 19, a glitch in the voting system prevented 58 students from receiving ballots. Since the SA Bylaws Committee did not know at the time how many students were unable to vote due to the glitch, they decided to hold a revote for the social vice president since the race had been close.
Dennis Negrón, vice president of Student Development, said that a statistician ran the numbers and found that there was only a .005% chance that a revote for the entire election would change the results. However, some senators, such as Heidi Burke, argued that this was an ethical issue and a matter of representing her constituents.
“For me, this has nothing to do with statistics,” Burke said. “This has nothing to do with the outcome. This has everything to do with representing ourselves as a democratic law. Democracy depends on a free, fair and competitive election.”
The possibility of a full student body revote was quickly eliminated.
“Are we saying that those people who chose not to vote the first time should get a chance to vote the second time?” Negrón said. “There is no fairness there.”
Among the other options discussed was sending official ballots to the 58 students who did not get to vote.
“I think opening up an opportunity to vote just for those fifty something would strengthen their trust in Senate,” Senator Tata Tsikrai said.
However, Negrón made it clear he would veto any decision involving an official revote. Regardless of the decision, Senator Arianne Milosavljevic suggested Senate should send a formal statement to students to clarify the situation.
Considering that the 58 students’ vote would not change the results, and that a formal decision to revote would be vetoed, options began to narrow. After further debate about how to proceed, Senator Houston Beckworth moved to uphold the decisions of the Bylaws Committee and, out of formality, send a ballot to the 58 students who were unable to vote.
Milosavljevic moved to amend the motion to include a formal statement to the student body explaining what occurred during the election. The amendment was seconded and approved. The amended motion passed with 13 yes votes and 10 no votes.
All members of the Bylaws Committee voted against the motion.
“We felt that the symbolic vote would send out mixed messages,” a committee member said. “But we’re okay with [sending] the statement.”
Burke voted against the motion because it retained the original election results.
“I am concerned,” Burke said. “…Out of fear of a veto, we never even made a motion that got vetoed. We stopped before we even came close. Instead, we gave [the students] a symbol, but the problem is, the symbol doesn’t mean anything.”
Senator Andrew Cornelius, who represents mostly business majors, voted against the motion. He agreed that Senate should give a formal statement, but disagreed with the symbolic vote because of how students could perceive it. He said if students view it as a real chance to vote without realizing the election has already been called, they might lose trust in Senate.
Senator Lukas Castillo, who represents mostly liberal arts, nursing and biology majors, voted in favor of the motion.
“It was a really tough decision, to be honest,” he said. “We’re trying our best to support all the students and make sure they are all represented.”
After the meeting, Beckworth, who made the motion for the symbolic ballots, reflected on a missed opportunity.
“It would have been valuable to at least move to redo the election…and have it vetoed by Dr. Negrón to show that we are acting to our full extent,” he said. “Aside from that, I feel like we have done as much as we can do to address the issue.”
Negrón said he hopes students believe that Senate works with integrity and realize that the bylaws and election manual are documents Senate tries to follow faithfully.
“I think this [meeting] was an example of them trying to follow the letter and spirit of the law,” he said.
A wide consensus was that the bylaws need amending, so a similar situation does not reoccur.
“On behalf of the SA Bylaws Committee, we would like to provide clarification regarding the recent social vice president election.
When the election results were released, the margin between the candidates for social vice president was extremely close. At the same time, it came to our attention that a number of students were unable to receive or submit their ballots due to a system glitch affecting those enrolled in arranged, online, or directed studies courses. Because the number of impacted students could have potentially influenced the outcome of the race, we as the Bylaws Committee were required to make a decision to ensure fairness and integrity in the election process.
After careful consideration, the committee voted to hold a student body revote for the social vice president position so that all eligible students would have a fair opportunity to participate and confidence in the final result.
A revote for the presidential race was not pursued. In addition to the margin being large enough that the system issue would not have affected the outcome, sponsors exercised their authority to veto the option of reopening that race.
We remain committed to transparency, fairness, and upholding the integrity of the Student Association election process.”
Dr. Negrón
