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Student body election campaigns begin on Saturday, but complaints have already been filed against both of the political parties.
The ASUU Elections Committee, a seven-person governing body, has heard and ruled on four separate grievances since January. Most of their decisions resulted in campaigning setbacks for the two parties — the Empower Party, led by Satin Tashnizi, and the Snow Party, led by Ambra Jackson — and individual candidates.
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Ali Sadler, ASUU elections registrar, who does not vote but advises the committee, said the grievances — filed when a party violates a campaign rule — are meant to “ensure that the elections process is one that students can trust through ensuring that the process is fair.”
Grievance One
Sixteen legislative candidates did not attend one of the mandatory orientation meetings held Jan. 14, 15 and 21. All members running in the election were told of the required session as early as September 2014.
Five candidates from The Empower Party skipped the meeting, but all have since decided not to run.
“They have dropped due to a work and schedule load they had not taken into consideration,” Tashnizi said. “Many candidates are unfamiliar with the process and commitment and fear they will over-commit to a position that they are not entirely sure about, which is common.”
The Elections Committee fined the party three percent of their budget.
The Snow Party had nine members miss the January meeting. One candidate, Alexander Au, running for assembly representative with the U’s School of Medicine, was present at the grievance hearing on Jan. 29. He said he missed the orientation dates due to pneumonia, which also kept him from attending classes at that time. The Elections Committee waived Au’s absence.
The committee fined the Snow Party eight percent of their budget — one percent per remaining member who did not attend orientation. Each of the eight candidates also received individual marketing suspensions until Feb. 26 at 8 a.m. — five days after campaigning begins on Feb. 21.
Anthony Oyler, the party’s candidate for vice president, appealed the budget fine to the ASUU Supreme Court. The student justices removed the penalty, noting in their court opinion that because party financial forms were due Jan. 29 it “would leave campaigns with little to no flexibility in [party] budgets for unexpected expenses, such as a fine.”
Oyler said the Snow Party leaders have since met with their legislative members who missed orientation to fill them in, but he was worried the fine would impact the whole party negatively. The eight percent fine accounted for $326.08 of the party’s budget, which is money Oyler said was designated for marketing.
“We would have been unable to pay for posters for our candidates,” he said.
Each party has an overall budget limit of $4,500, to which ASUU contributes $2,250 — Sadler said this is to make elections “more accessible to all students.”
Nicole Licau, an independent candidate running as a representative for the College of Humanities, also missed the orientation meeting, and was fined one percent of her budget, or $0.50, and prohibited from marketing until Feb. 26.
Grievance Two
The Empower Party missed the Jan. 26 deadline to submit marketing to ASUU. They turned in their material four days later.
Tashnizi said it was a misunderstanding, and her party needed to perfect their platform before submitting the posters, which she thought she had OK’d with Sadler.
“It stressed our campaign quite a bit,” she said. “It absolutely was a setback, given that we had everything else done, but we recognize that a school-wide campaign comes with obstacles along the way, and you just have to move forward.”
The Elections Committee ruled that the party will be able to post marketing materials on Feb. 25. Sadler said at the grievance hearing there are “practical reasons” to have deadlines in elections, and both parties were informed of the dates in their election packets.
“There is a lot of logistical work that has to go on … to make sure that elections actually happen,” she said. “[It’s] irresponsible not to keep with the marketing deadline.”
Grievance Three
Parker Archer, the current ASUU representative for the College of Mines and Earth Sciences, missed the candidate-filing deadline for the elections. He filed a grievance form asking the Elections Committee to allow him to still run this year, which they denied.
“It was a little upsetting, but at the same time, the situation has worked out,” Archer said.
Since the grievance hearing, Archer said he talked with both party’s vice president candidates, who promised to appoint him to the position next year, as there are no candidates on the ballot for the College of Mines and Earth Science. Sadler said ASUU vice presidents have that power to fill holes in the assembly. Archer’s college is the only one without a representative seeking election for 2015.
Grievance Four
The Elections Committee fined Tashnizi with early campaigning because she spoke to a KUTV reporter about running in the ASUU elections.
The story states: “As a political science major and a candidate for student government president, she hopes to rally her fellow college students to vote.”
Tashnizi posted the story to her Facebook page, but said she didn’t know it included a note about the election.
“I actually told the reporter to leave out that I was running for president,” she said. “I was surprised to find that in there.”
She was not present at the grievance hearing to defend against the complaint. The Election Committee fined the Empower Party $10 for the incident, citing policies outlined in the election rules against early campaigning both in person and on social media.
They released a statement on their ruling, noting possible room for confusion with the guidelines: “We are concerned that the elections packet does not directly address the violation.”
Sadler said she will suggest that the ASUU elections packet be updated to avoid similar cases in the future.
“I believe that it is very difficult to create election rules that apply to every possible violation,” she said.
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