Associated Students elections committee members passed several votes yesterday that disciplined candidates for A.S. council who had already lost their respective campaigns.
Presidential candidate Andrew Roy was instructed to turn in his campaign expenditure forms by Friday at 4:30 p.m., or be disqualified from the election that Matt Keipper already won.
Liz Ring, who campaigned to sit as an A.S. representative for the College of Health and Human Services received the same instructions, although Arlene Hady and Katrina Reyes already won in that category.
And six candidates, three of whom lost their races, were reprimanded for violating A.S.’ rules regarding social-networking Web sites, such as MySpace and Facebook.
But none of the aforementioned decisions have any impact on the elections.
The only ruling made yesterday that could potentially affect the outcome of the results was when the committee said that Gabriel Ruiz, a write-in candidate for unclassified studies, needed to turn in his expenditure forms by Friday at 4:30 p.m., or be disqualified.
Ruiz won one of the two seats on A.S. council representing unclassified studies after garnering six votes, or 5.6 percent of the 108 total votes cast for that position.
Elections committee member Scott Simpson said that everybody who ran in the election should be held accountable – not just those who won.
“We didn’t say everybody who wins needs to turn in an expenditure statement – we said everybody does,” Simpson said. “The trick with that is that if they don’t win, there’s not a whole lot of leverage.
“We can say you’re disqualified, we can say you’re reprimanded. But if they didn’t win the office, there’s not a whole lot (we can do).”
Elections committee chair Israel Alarid agreed that it was necessary for the elections committee to make the decisions it did.
“We’re here as the elections committee to uphold the bylaws,” Alarid said. “With that said, if we don’t I think we’re doing a disservice, not only to the bylaws but to the students.”
Both Alarid and Simpson said that the amount of reprimands issued this year was not any different than in years past, but both said they were surprised to hear that Daniel Goldberg was the first candidate to be disqualified since 1992.
Simpson said that in the coming months, he thinks A.S. could potentially draft legislation allowing the use of MySpace in subsequent elections after the dilemma regarding Goldberg’s disqualification.
In total, 11 candidates were reprimanded during this years election for allowing friends to post messages of endorsement on the candidates’ MySpace accounts.
