The Floyd McKissick Senate ticket unofficially won the executive board election by a narrow margin last Tuesday.
The ticket’s chief competition, from sophomore Zach Smith and his “People Party,” has lodged complaints that “certain fundamental rules may have been broken” and will challenge the outcome of the election, he said in an e-mail statement. The McKissick ticket did not immediately return a request for comment at press time Wednesday night.
According to senior Naz Urooj, Senate President, the Senate is not involved in the appeals process. Dean of Campus Life Anne Lundquist will form an ad hoc appeals committee consisting of first-year Steven Wheeler, who oversaw the election and voting, Jodi Gill, assistant dean of campus life for discipline, and others, Urooj said. Urooj also said that a campus-wide e-mail would be sent by Friday clarifying the situation.
Smith and his ticket did not specify their exact grounds for appeal, saying only that “We believe some of the alleged offenses may have been grave enough to jeopardize the legitimacy of the election and ultimately Senate itself.
“We will not support the outcome of this election until we are able to look into it much more closely,” Smith said.
Reports that some students were allowed to vote without having their SmartCards, and that a faulty student roster was missing the names of some who attempted to vote and were thus rejected, could not be confirmed.
This appeal is notably similar to allegations made last spring against the Urooj ticket that it campaigned in Founders on election day, specifically outlawed in Senate election policy.
A similar ad hoc appeals committee last year did not find that the Urooj ticket was at fault enough to reverse the result of the election, which it won by 62 votes. However, since the margin this year is far slimmer, a reconsideration of campaign or voter propriety conceivably puts the McKissick ticket victory in question.
“This [appeals process] happens every year,” Urooj said in passing at the Senate meeting Wednesday night, where she announced the unofficial results. “It’s a bunch of baloney.”