StuCo election results disputed
By Katherine Brewer · The Johns Hopkins News-Letter · May 5, 2005
Although Student Council has been given preliminary results of the election held two weeks ago, the Board of Elections refused to release a full list of winning candidates due to six student disqualifications and subsequent appeals, according to the BoE.
According to Jeffrey Groden-Thomas, Director of Student Involvement, disqualifications occurred due to students neglecting to turn in spending reports and violations of class standing.
"I believe the original results changed because some people were disqualified," said Groden-Thomas.
"One appeal has been officially filed, and we are expecting one or two more," said Seibert. Seibert refused to release the names of the students who filed the appeals.
The official appeal was made by Shereef Elnahal, winner of the presidency for the class of 2007. Elnahal was disqualified because he did not hand in his candidate spending report, a requirement for all candidates within hours of the closing of the polls. Elnahal's appeal was rejected and he is now waiting to hear from Groden-Thomas, who heads a second appeal board.
Elnahal's appeal is based on his claim that the BoE did not notify him of how and where to hand in his spending and that the BoE's constitution is vague on whether candidates who do not incur any costs have to hand in a spending report.
"The board of elections violated several of their own provisions and then disqualified me for supposively violating one," said Elnahal.
"First they never told us when and where we can get our flier signed, so I was unable to do any publicity.
He continued, "Secondly, BoE gave me the wrong email address at a candidate meeting and never gave me a way of contacting them to hand in any forms."
Incoming StuCo Presidnet Atin Agarwal spoke on behalf of Elnahal.
"Shereef wasn't notified until yesterday of his disqualification," said Agarwal.
"No one was notified until a week and a half after the election took place, and that makes things difficult. All these technical glitches proves that the BoE is not functioning well," he added.
"It states clearly in the BoE rules that they have to send out an email to the candidates. They never did so. There was no way in which I could have handed this in on time," Elnahal said.
"Appeals should have been made a while ago, so the appeal board may not hear them," said Seibert, who also stated that he hopes and believes all these matters will be resolved before the end of the week so all results can be officially released.
"This leads to an institutional bias towards people who was already on student council, like my opponent [Deepa Ghandi]," said Elnahal. "Winning candidates were disqualified because of technicalities. It makes a complete mockery of this supposed democracy. It created a bias towards Deepa even though I won the popular vote."
Outgoing StuCo President, senior Iverson Long, expressed fustration with this election as well as elections held earlier this year.
"All I can say is that I have great optimism for next year, because I see this as the last straw," said Long, "This BoE will never, ever again be approved to work in elections. "
"Everyone is pretty sure there is going to be a real overhaul after the events of this year," he added.
Agarwal concurred with Long's concern about the BoE's involvement in elections.
"Of course its disappointing that after the election was held two weeks ago, that we still don't have the result," Agarwal said. "I can understand why that's frustrating for both the students and the candidates."
"There have always been disqualifications every time and I'm not saying that a candidate shouldn't follow the rules, but perhaps the rules weren't clearly stated," Argarwal said.
"I find it aggravating the BoE cannot properly inform student body of election results," said Ghandi, Elnahal's opponent.
Ghandi was informed that she had lost the election but now might be named the winner due to Elnahal's disqualification.
"I believe election results should only be posted after all disqualifications and appeals are dealt with. It would be nice if just once they gave official results instead of tentative ones," Ghandi said.
A second disqualification, Jason Imbrogno, who ran and won Senator of Finance for the class of 2007, was informed early yesterday that he was disqualified because he did not hand in his spending report or his candidate agreement form.
"We didn't have an email address to reach anyone," said Imbrogno, who expressed similar complaints as Elnahal, and is working with him to try to overturn both of their disqualifications.
If Imbrogno's disqualification stands, Imbrogno's opponent, Yana Belyaev, will serve as Senator of Finance for the class of 2007.
"The rules are very clear about when you need to turn in a spending report," said Long. "It is about the only thing that is clear." Long said that such disqualifications occur every year.