The Downtown election committee disqualified presidential candidate Erika Green Monday night for failing to include campaign materials — a whiteboard and easel — on her expenditures report.
“This happens every year Downtown. It’s a bad trend,” Director of Administration and head of the election committee Rudy Rivas said, who later called the violation a “silly mistake.”
The committee seemed reluctant to disqualify Green, who was attending the meeting via phone call on speakerphone, and was apologetic both before and after voting on the violation.
“We just have to go with what the code says and how we want to interpret it,” said Katy Graves, election committee member and senator for Barrett, the Honors College.
The 4-1 vote came only 30 minutes before voting opened at 12:01 Tuesday morning.
Despite the disqualification, the election committee said Green’s name would remain on the ballot Tuesday and Wednesday in anticipation of her entering into the appeals process.
During the appeals process, Green will not be considered disqualified because she is appealing the decision, Rivas said.
Green told the Downtown Devil after the vote she plans on filing an appeal Tuesday and she is confident the judicial board will reverse the ruling. If her appeal isn’t successful, she said she would appeal again to the newly created ASU-wide Supreme Court.
“I do believe it will be overturned in the judicial board,” she said. “Everyone will understand it was just a mistake in the end, nothing to injure the other party.”
Green said she would have liked to be at the meeting in person because it was confusing and difficult to understand the conversations over the phone. Green lives on the Tempe campus.
Green also said she was frustrated the meeting was held Monday night, and would have preferred dealing with the complaint Tuesday morning instead.
The reason the meeting was held Monday night, Rivas said, is because he wanted the violations to be addressed before voting began.
He received an email with the violation complaint at 8 p.m. Monday.
The complaint came from Clare Irvine, political science junior and a member of USGD President Joseph Grossman’s campaign.
Irvine said she wasn’t searching for violations, but saw the whiteboard attracting students and later noticed it was “blatantly missing” from Green’s expenditures report after looking through it.
Irvine said she wrote the complaint letter that was sent to the election committee.
“We’re just trying to keep it clean,” she said said. “It’s not fun.”
Green violated code 7-2.2, which states: “Documentation for all campaign expenditures and the total of those expenditures for each week leading up to the election shall be reported to the Elections Department by 5:00 p.m. every Friday of the election season.”
The election committee focused on the word “all” during discussion, agreeing that, even though Green’s Vice President of Policy Sally Lopez Bravo already owned the whiteboard and easel, it still needed to be included on the report.
Section 7-3.2 says all donations must be “included in the total expenses a candidate is allowed to spend.”
Green said this confused her because they weren’t spending any money on the whiteboard and easel, and she didn’t believe those were considered a donation.
But Graves said she couldn’t see the difference between the donated artificial grass Green used during the campaign (which was included on her expenditures report) and the whiteboard and easel.
“You could say (Lopez Bravo) donated the whiteboard,” Graves said.
The complaint brought forward two other potential violations in addition to the one Green was disqualified on.
One complaint stated the market value of the whiteboard and easel pushed Green over the limit for how much a candidate could spend during a campaign.
For Green to go over the spending limit, the whiteboard and easel would have had to be worth about $125 combined.
Rivas and the rest of the election committee agreed the value prescribed to the two items were much higher than a campaign would actually spend. After re-working the math, the complaint was shot down 5-0.
“That must be the best whiteboard and easel in the world,” Rivas said. “This complaint is petty, to be honest with you.”
Rivas also called the complaint “pathetic.”
Another complaint was voted down with little debate because the committee felt the violation didn’t apply in this case because Green’s campaign didn’t purchase the whiteboard or easel.
The meeting was nearly an hour long, with Grossman’s ticket, several supporters and Irvine present. Election committee member and College of Nursing and Health Innovation Sen. Dani Sandler called into the meeting.
On the final vote, only dietetics junior Jaime Buchholz voted to not disqualify Green.
Contact the reporter at connor.radnovich@asu.edu
To learn more about the candidates, see profiles of Erika Green and Joseph Grossman.
