The Student Assembly threw the GUSA executive election process back into contention Tuesday night when it refused to certify last week’s results.
In a surprising turn of events, the Assembly strongly rejected the results of the Feb. 16 election, which would have resulted in the inauguration of Twister Murchison (SFS ‘08) and Salik Ishtiaq (SFS ‘07) as president and vice-president, respectively. The vote came after the Election Appeals Board rejected a petition for reinstatement on Monday from disqualified candidates Khalil Hibri (SFS ‘07) and Geoff Greene (SFS ‘07), who won a plurality of votes in the election.
Instead, the Assembly moved into uncharted territory. The GUSA constitution states that “the Assembly shall certify the election results by majority vote,” but the constitution does not specify what should occur in the event that the Assembly fails to certify the vote.
“If Khalil and I just rolled over and allowed this to carry on, then all of GUSA legitimacy would be lost,” Greene said.
The election commission met last night and will work with the Assembly and the GUSA Executive, held in the interim by current President Pravin Rajan (SFS ‘07), to develop a plan leading to a new election, officials said. The format of the election was unclear at press time, but options include having a one-day revote, a repeat Executive campaign or the overlap of the executive campaign with the upcoming assembly campaigns.
The decision not to certify the election signified the emerging rancor between GUSA and the Election Commission, following criticism of the commission’s role in the Hibri/Greene disqualification. In their Monday denial of the Hibri/Greene appeal, the Appeals Commission recognized a degree of negligence on the part of the Election Commission.
“The commission is not happy at all with these results,” Election Commissioner Benita Sinnarajah (CAS ‘06) said. “The Election Commission stuck by the election. The Appeals Board found it valid. They didn’t have the power to swamp us like they did last [Tuesday] night.”
The overwhelming majority of voting assembly members (Murchison and Ishtiaq, both assembly members, abstained from voting throughout the meeting) agreed with first-year representative Anthony Bonna (MSB ‘09), a Murchison supporter who nonetheless led the effort against certification. Bonna argued that GUSA needed to reinforce its power as an organization.
“I’m not going to sit at a table and raise my hand just to say aye,” Bonna said. “The certification actually means something; GUSA actually means something. If the assembly has no role in the certification, then that’s scary … there’s no oversight.”
But Sinnarajah, members of the Murchison campaign and several GUSA representatives disagree with that interpretation.
“[The assembly] seems to be asserting authority they are nowhere given in the by-laws, but I recognize the validity of their arguments,” GUSA Chief of Staff Drew Rau (COL ‘06).
All agreed that GUSA’s respect and reputation among the student body had been damaged.
“If Adam Giblin said he and Kelly [Hampton] killed GUSA, then this situation may well ghost-buster it,” Murchison said, referring to the two-month long election dispute that occurred in 2004 between Giblin (SFS ‘06) and Hampton (SFS ‘05).
The Hibri/Greene ticket was originally disqualified after their campaign used laptop computers to help students vote, a tactic forbidden by the Election Commission but apparently allowed in an election-day phone conversation between Greene and Sinnarajah. Their disqualification appeal was denied after the Appeals board ruled that their jurisdiction only extended to cases of bias. No candidate alleges any bias on the Election Commission, and representatives from both campaigns agree that the election was run fairly, if imperfectly. There were no allegations of misconduct against the Murchison/Ishtiaq ticket.
Saxa Server Administrator and Voice staff member Dave Stroup, who runs the online voting system, said that no more than 17 votes were cast from the cafeteria. No more than four votes were cast from any other single computer. Meanwhile, Hibri/Greene won the election with 45.9 percent of the 2,267 person electorate, the highest percentage in the last five years and 7 percent higher than the 38.5 percent taken by the Murchison/Isthiaq ticket.
