Election rules were broken

All of the candidates for ASUSU president, except for Bill Munns, wore campaign material to the USU basketball game on Feb. 28, a violation of Article IV (D5) of the ASUSU Election Bylaws, possibly because of misinformation from the elections committee, said Michael Deamer, chief justice of student court and hearing board pool chair.

According to the decision of the student court, written by Deamer, the court can only speculate whether or not the seven votes Munns needed to continue onto the final election could have been obtained if Munns had also broken the bylaw. The student court declared the only way to remedy the outcome would be to hold a new election. However, Munns has withdrawn his candidacy to prevent the possibility of a new election needing to be called, he said.

“We can’t go back to the basketball game and change what happened. The only real way to know for sure is to hold a new election,” Deamer said. “The student court was prepared to (hold a new election). We wanted to make sure the elections was fair, but Bill decided to withdraw his candidacy. He did something really noble by that.”

Deamer said the misunderstanding came from a part of Article IV (D5), that states, “Candidates are not allowed to display or distribute any campaign materials such as posters, banners, buttons or fliers during any USU athletic, club sport or programming event or outside of these events while patrons are entering or exiting the building.”

Deamer said there is another part of the bylaws which specifically state T-shirts and other apparel are campaign material.

Munns said he withdrew from the race because it was not his goal to have a new election called, rather have a checks and balances system placed over the election committee to prevent this same thing from happening to someone in the future.

“Our campaign didn’t have the opportunity to wear our shirts to the game,” Munns said. “When we got there, other people were wearing their shirts. I asked the elections chair to address this, and she attempted to do so, and then she came back to me and told me I could go get the T-shirt, but we weren’t there to campaign. We were there to enjoy the basketball game. Even if we had left the basketball game, we could not have been able to re-enter because you can only swipe your cards once,” he said.

Munns said each candidate was told to read and know the bylaws, so he felt the decision of the elections committee was unfair.

Jodie Savage, elections committee chair, said the committee did agree to let some of the students running for office wear their shirts to the game. The decision to do so was not made public because the elections committee felt the students who thought to ask about it should get the advantage, Savage said.

Munns said he felt the decision of the elections committee was unfair, and one of his main motives was to make sure they were held accountable.

“Obviously we feel like this affected the outcome of the elections,” Munns said. “We are not going to be the sore loser who tries everything we can just to get in office. We are just proving that there needs to be a change.”

-debrajoy.h@aggiemail.usu.edu