Five of the nine candidates running for positions on the Student Government Association (SGA) executive board have allegedly broken election rules, stalling an official announcement of the winners until an appeals process ends Friday.
It appears that some, if not all, of the contested positions will go to candidates who did not win the popular vote.
According to the Committee on Student Elections' (CSE) guidelines, all of the alleged infractions should lead to disqualification from the race.
Although these disqualifications can be overturned by an appeals board, preliminary results show that freshman Dan Teran should be president, sophomore Evan Lazerowitz should be vice president, sophomore Yasin Akbari should be treasurer and sophomore Tim Miller should be secretary for the 2008-2009 academic year.
Presidential candidate Sonny Chandrasekhar, a junior, won the popular vote, but his infractions will likely disqualify him.
Four of the candidates were cited for failure to turn in their campaign finance report properly or within the allotted time period, while Chandrasekhar was cited for unlawfully soliciting votes for himself and his running mate during the elections period.
According to CSE, candidates are not allowed to solicit votes once the voting has begun. Early in the voting period, Presidential candidate Chandrasekhar sent an e-mail to members of his fraternity asking for their votes.
"I did in fact send out an e-mail to my fraternity. I misinterpreted the rules - I told them to vote for me after the appropriate time," Chandrasekhar said.
"There is an investigation into this. It was a violation of campaign rules, and the effect of that on the election will be determined," he added.
Various anonymous sources involved in the election have confirmed that until Chandrasekhar was disqualified, he was winning the election by popular vote.
"This isn't how I wanted the elections to turn out, but I do feel that the explicit nature of [Chandrasekhar's] e-mail was the deciding factor in the elections," Teran said.
Chandrasekhar is currently appealing his disqualification. The results of the appeals process will be announced by Friday, but Chandrasekhar said he does not expect the appeal to change the outcome of the election.
"I didn't decide to appeal because I thought Dan would be a bad president. I'm more than confident that he'd do a good job as president. I decided to appeal simply to see what the results would have been," he said.
Chandrasekhar said that when he was notified of his disqualification, he considered withdrawing from the race because he had been told that if he lost the race, he would not be able to run for class council.
When he realized that this information was incorrect, he made the decision to stay in the presidential race while he was also collecting signatures to run for a class council position.
Chandrasekhar's e-mail also solicited votes for his vice-presidential running mate, sophomore David Rokeach, and would also disqualify him from the elections according to CSE rules.
Rokeach was also cited for failure to properly turn in his campaign spending report.
Presidential candidate junior Justine Mink, vice-presidential candidate junior Chris Louie and Mark Zamorski were also cited for failing to turn in their spending reports.
There have also been questions as to whether seniors should have been able to vote in the election. According to CSE chair Tyler Kruse, CSE decided to uphold a "precedent" not to include their votes and informed candidates of this decision before the elections began.
He again reminded candidates that these votes would not count after the elections ended, according to the same anonymous sources.
However, seniors were able to physically log on to the voting system and vote.
Because of this, the senior votes had to be removed by hand after the election period ended.
The results of the elections were different before these votes were discounted.
With senior votes and before his disqualification, Rokeach would have won the vice-presidential election. Teran would have lost the popular vote with or without the senior votes, but by a much smaller margin when they were discounted. Teran said that the entire debacle is an embarrassment to the Student Council.
"Rules and procedures are important, and people who can't abide by them shouldn't waste other people's time," he said.
"I hope our students understand the problems that we are going through, and that at end of appeals process, a final decision will be made. Hopefully it will be representative of student vote."
Teran said that he has no plans to run for a student class council position if the appeals board rules in favor of another candidate.
According to CSE rules, the Appeals Board is comprised of current Student Council President Bierbryer, the Director of Student Involvement and another member to be announced.
The appeals are done behind closed doors and all their decisions are final.
