BoE to conduct runoff election
By Brendan Schreiber · The Johns Hopkins News-Letter · April 29, 2004
The Board of Elections (BoE) faced more difficulty and delays this week as the end of the school year approaches. Due to a tie in the Student Council Executive Board elections last week, the presidential election will run for the third time this weekend. Additionally, an appeal by junior Payal Patel, the top vote recipient in the election for the senior class, overturned her disqualification, thereby making her the new president of the Class of 2005.
The BoE will run an emergency election - the third round for the Executive Board - from noon this Saturday until noon on Sunday to elect next year's president of StuCo. The rushed elections are intended to prevent interference with exams.
Junior Soren Gandrud and sophomore Hyder Syed will face each other in a runoff election. Gandrud and Syed will be the only two candidates running. They tied in the second election with 397 votes each.
"It's incredible that there's been a tie," Gandrud said. "It shows that there's a lot of student support out there since each candidate got almost 400 votes."
"It happens," BoE Co-Chair Matt Bouloubasis said of the tie.
Vote totals in the class elections two weeks ago dropped over 10 percent from the March elections. In March, 1,041 of 3,711 eligible voters (35.1 percent) participated, but only 24 percent voted in the class elections.
Gandrud is fearful that vote totals may continue to drop in the third election.
"I'm worried that student involvement might drop, and it's important that the BoE and StuCo get out and help build involvement. I hope people get out and vote."
He added that he feels the repetition of elections has "absolutely hurt students' image of StuCo," claiming that a feeling of negativity has hindered the process throughout both campaigns.
The controversy began in March, when several candidates for Executive Board president dropped out of the campaign for a variety of reasons.
Some cited problems with the new constitution, while others made claims of negative campaigning and withdrew from the campaign when they felt the mudslinging had gone too far.
At one point, Gandrud was disqualified from the race for negative campaigning, but was allowed to return to the candidate pool following his successful appeal of the decision.
Despite this alleged history of dirty campaigning, the BoE has decided to retract all BoE campaign guidelines and restrictions for the emergency election. The two candidates must only abide by municipal, state and national campaign laws; the BoE is not imposing any of its own rules for this election.
"This gives them free reign to do pretty much anything they want," said Bouloubasis. "This is what everybody wanted, including the JHU-ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union], StuCo and any of the enemies of the BoE. They wanted transparency and now they have it. Let's just hope what they got is what they wanted."
The JHU-ACLU filed an official complaint against the BoE in March, asking them to postpone the Executive Board elections and reform their policy to increase the fluidity and effectiveness of BoE-run elections.
According to the JHU-ACLU, when the BoE rejected the complaint, the group appealed the rejection on the basis of a failure to follow protocol.
In this document, the JHU-ACLU listed specific recommendations for policy changes, with an emphasis on increased transparency during elections.
This and other complaints drove the BoE to toss out the results of the election and decide to re-run it during the class elections.
Violations of campaign policy showed up again in this round of elections, when Patel was disqualified due to an e-mail sent to the Hopkins Peace Corps list proc, promoting her candidacy. Although she was unaware of the distribution e-mail, this violates BoE campaign guidelines, and she was disqualified.
Patel appealed her removal from the race on the grounds that the policy was not listed on the BoE Web site, and was allowed to reenter.
Having won 43.5 percent of the total votes, nearly two times as many votes as the runner-up, she was immediately declared president of the senior class.
Gandrud, the current vice president of the Class of 2005, feels that the repetition during this extended election season is discouraging for both the candidates and the student body.
"I've been really disheartened by [the election process]; it's been going on for three-and-a-half months," Gandrud said. "Regardless of what happens, there is still a good group working in StuCo, no matter who ends up winning, or what controversy will follow."