A recent visit back to campus alerted us to the disputed elections for president and vice-president of the Georgetown University Student Association. We feel compelled to express our disagreement and disappointment regarding the outcome. Though we know none of the players involved in this saga, it so happens that both of us were members of the eight-person committee that between December 1989 and February 1990 drafted the current GUSA Constitution, which was adopted by the student body and entered into force in March 1990.
Those individuals who favored certifying the most recent GUSA presidential election results (results that recommended certifying a losing ticket as the winners) apparently relied on a single GUSA bylaw. GUSA bylaw 19.07 states: “Upon the conclusion of the elections, the results shall be compiled in writing by the Chair of the Election Commission and presented to the Chair of the Assembly. The Assembly shall certify the election results by majority vote. Elections shall not be final until their certification by the Assembly.”
According to the interpretation urged by those who sought to force a rubber stamp approval of the election results by the GUSA Assembly, the language that reads “[t]he Assembly shall certify the election results” supposedly binds the Assembly to certify whatever results the Election Commission presents, absent any independent review by the elected representatives of the student body as to how the Election Commission conducted themselves or the election.
This strained interpretation of a single GUSA bylaw is wrong. The plain meaning and the original intent of the GUSA Constitution should dictate the outcome, not a single bylaw read out of context. In fact, those who relied on this single bylaw have pushed the Assembly to certify an absurd result: candidates who did not win an election were certified as winners.
Even assuming that disqualification of the winning candidates was warranted (and under our review of the facts, it was not), the Assembly has the power to reject the tainted results and order a new election.
We chose the words in the GUSA Constitution to mean specific things. The original intent of the language “to constitute and certify elections and returns” that appears in the GUSA Constitution is that the Assembly has the power to cause elections to take place and to certify the results, or, if need be, not certify the results.
Such a mechanism was specifically created so that elected student officials, and not the Election Commission, would have the final review of election results. The Assembly acted properly—and in our opinion, courageously—when it refused to certify the flawed election results presented to them by the Election Commission.
It also unquestionably acted properly in ordering new elections and recognizing that the results had been tainted beyond any rehabilitative action. There is a curiously overlooked GUSA bylaw that supports this action, stating that the Chair of the Election Commission has the duty to “[p]resent the results of the elections to the GUSA Assembly for approval.” This language does not mean that the comission is bound to automatically accept these results.
Moreover, we never wrote any “guidelines” for the Assembly’s election certification in 1990 because, frankly, we never contemplated that a future Election Commission would move to disqualify winning candidates and recommend that the Assembly install candidates into office who had been elected by no one.
The GUSA Assembly has a history of dealing with nebulous election results by mandating either new elections or runoff elections. In this instance, unfortunately, the story is complete.
We offer, however, the following recommendations that may begin a path to reform a system that clearly requires it. We urge, in the strongest possible terms, that the GUSA Assembly immediately abolish the Elections Appeal Board. The Elections Appeal Board is plainly unconstitutional under the GUSA Constitution. It fails to respect the separation of powers by co-mingling executive functions (i.e., running an election) with judicial functions (i.e., review of election disputes for unconstitutionality).
This wounds the constitutional structure of GUSA. It also injures any student who wishes to appeal a decision of the Election Commission. Having this Elections Appeals Board—consisting of Election Commission members and Constitutional Council members—is like asking the fox what he thinks about getting caught breaking into the henhouse.
We further urge the GUSA Assembly to abolish the Election Commission, rescind all GUSA election bylaws and put in place transitional rules for the upcoming GUSA Assembly elections, to be followed by permanent rules in fall 2006. As currently written, the GUSA election bylaws have morphed over the last 16 years into a spider web of incomprehensible and internally inconsistent provisions that unreasonably gag political speech, a core value in our political system. In its place, a new “Board of Elections” should be created.
The Board of Elections should serve two primary functions: (1) regulating campaign spending; and (2) physically running GUSA elections, counting the votes and reporting the results to the GUSA Assembly for certification. Punishment for violations of bylaws should be limited to fines payable before a candidate takes office. Moreover, the Board of Elections should be prohibited from having the power to disqualify candidates—a power without any written standards that the Election Commission has clearly abused.
If a candidate were found to have engaged in intentional misconduct (i.e., bribes, rigging the ballot box or other forms of fraud and quasi-criminal conduct), then the Assembly, as the elected representative body of the students, could in its power and duty refuse to certify the elections.
GUSA has always struggled for legitimacy. Internal disputes over constitutions, bylaws and elections tend to distance the student body at large from any connection they may hope to have with their elected and appointed student leaders. That is what makes episodes such as that currently unfolding so unfortunate.
Yet, once this most recent episode becomes just another piece of GUSA’s long history, it will be left to those who carry on to do the hard work of proving to the Georgetown community that GUSA can and must be a strong, organized voice for student advocacy.
Legitimacy, after all, is best earned through actions and results, rather than crafted in a constitution or by law.
