ASASUD to set precedent in handling of Cano/Hillyard disqualification
Members of the ASASUD Election Committee said they are discussing how an appeal process for the disqualification of the Cano/Hillyard campaign, if any, will be handled late Thursday night and early Friday morning.
The members, sophomore Senators Amanda Cram and Abby Wischnia, also announced that the election committee will host a public meeting Monday at noon to talk about how all complaints during the election were handled during the election period.
Some of the details of the meeting remain unclear as Cram initially said the meeting would be a Q&A session with students in room 120 of the US Post Office, but Wischnia later said she wasn’t sure if there will be time to take questions and that the meeting may be held at Taylor Place instead.
“I’m sure we will be (taking questions), but I don’t know how long the time frame would allow questions because I know we’re going to present our own stuff to everyone,” Wischnia said.
Cram said the Election Committee is currently discussing how they will handle an appeal by freshmen Andres Cano and Vaughn Hillyard and whether junior Christian Vasquez and freshman Jessica Abercrombie can actually serve as president and vice president, as was announced Thursday morning, having not gained 51 percent of the vote, and said further questions about the two topics should be asked at Monday’s meeting.
Cram said she will definitely be listening to students as the Elections Committee moves forward in the handling of an appeal process of the disqualification of the winning campaign.
“Students voices should be heard,” she said. “I’m definitely going to take everything into account when we further discuss this as an elections committee.”
Wischnia said there is nothing in this year’s Election Code regarding an appeal process, but said the committee is more than willing to hear Cano and Hillyard out.
“But in terms of an official process or anything to go by, there’s nothing in place,” she said. “It’s up to the election committee how to handle anything from here.”
Wischnia said she isn’t sure if any other body of ASASUD can serve as a check and balance to the actions of the Election Committee. She said the ASASUD Judiciary Board cannot do anything because she said only the Election Committee has any decision making authority over anything in the election.
The Election Committee wants to make sure the election is fair by sticking to the Election Code and enforcing it, Wischnia said.
“We just hope that the Downtown campus understands that this is us doing our jobs and this is us being as thorough as possible,” she said.
The purpose of the Election Code, Wischnia said, is to ensure candidates don’t do anything or put out any material that might give them an unfair advantage over their opponents.
“This is us, like I said, enforcing the election code,” she said.
Wischnia said she encourages Cano and Hillyard to go through with their appeal, but said she doesn’t think the Election Committee’s decision will be reversed.
“I think ultimately we’re going to stick to the Election Code because
that’s what we’ve been doing this entire elections period,” she said.
Cram, who said she was the first to catch the mistake in the Facebook message posted by the Cano/Hillyard campaign that eventually led to their disqualification, said she told their campaign she did not approve of the message but would approve a revised version.
“It’s really disappointing,” she said. “No one wanted this to happen. All of us wanted both candidates to stay in and not be disqualified.”
The Campaigns
Vasquez, who the committee declared president of next year’s downtown student government following the disqualification, said Thursday afternoon he and Abercrombie do plan to assume the roles of president and vice president despite receiving fewer votes than Cano and Hillyard.
“While of course this isn’t the way that any candidate wants to win an election, I wouldn’t have run if I wasn’t prepared for this position,” he said. “Regardless of the election results, I plan to execute the role of student body president to its fullest.”
Vasquez said he knows there are students upset about the Election Committee’s decision, and said he encourages those students to go to ASASUD’s Web site to review and consider all of the violations committed by all candidates.
“The entire campaign, on both sides, both received violations,” he said. “It’s not just this particular violation was the deciding factor. It’s all the violations that are against them … it is unfortunate, but it’s up to the jurisdiction of the Election Committee.”
Junior Sen. Joe Pettinato, one of the Cano/Hillyard campaign managers, said Thursday night members of the disqualified campaign held multiple meeting throughout Monday night to figure out their course of action, and said the campaign will appeal. Pettinato said it’s unfortunate, however, that they will have to appeal to the same body that made the disqualification decision in the first place.
“We would much rather have a supreme court system like they have in West or Tempe where we can have a third party look at this,” he said.
Regarding the final Election Code violation by the Cano/Hillyard campaign, Pettinato said the campaign doesn’t believe their typo gave them an unfair advantage over their opponents.
“If anything, if anything came from that message within the last three hours it was on Facebook before the election closed, it would have hurt us,” he said. “So we don’t feel this is just reason to disqualify us.”
Pettinato said the Cano/Hillyard campaign is glad the Election Committee will host an event Monday, but said they are more interested in making sure the voices of the 454 people who voted are heard.
“We want to have a discussion about how we can resolve this,” he said. “What can we do to make sure that it’s truly a fair election? That’s all we’re asking for.”
Pettinato said all they want from Vasquez and Abercrombie is to help them try to find a solution to make sure every vote is heard.
Abercrombie, who is currently slated to serve as next year’s vice president, said Friday afternoon she doesn’t think any of the violations by the Cano/Hillyard campaign were in direct offense of their campaign or intentional, but she said she does think the violations gave them an advantage over their campaign
“I don’t think it was intentionally advantageous,” she said. “However, I do think it may have had some advantage.”
Abercrombie said she is happy to see how passionate the students are about their student government, and said she can sympathize with students who are discontent but cannot empathize with how they feel. She said she and Vasquez didn’t do anything wrong.
“I completely understand their distress and their opposition, and frankly, if it were me, I would do the exact same thing,” she said. “But personally, I don’t feel I need to apologize to anyone … I’m ready to step up with Christian and lead the campus the best we can.”
Following the announcement of Cano and Hillyard’s disqualification, journalism freshman Blake Wilson said Thursday night he created a grassroots group on Facebook in support of challenging the Election Committee’s decision.
Wilson said he believes the Election Committee’s penalties against Cano and Hillyard for the endorsements they received were in violation of the First Amendment. He said the goal of “Stand Strong with Andres and Vaughn” is to ensure a runoff election next week in order to allow Downtown students a second chance to show who they want as their president and vice president.
“I don’t want them to just give the presidential title (to Cano) because that wouldn’t be fair either – despite the fact that they won the election,” he said.
The Facebook group lists the emails of Dean of Student Affairs Georgeana Montoya, current ASASUD President Tania Mendes and the Election Committee and encourages its more than 100 members to email them
as many emails as they can to Montoya, Tania Mendes, and the Election Committee.
“We’re just going to fill their boxes with just angry emails letting them know that we’re not going to stand for stuff like this,” he said. “This is really unfair if they’re going to let three students knock off the presidential candidate that won the election.”
Wilson said the group encourages members to email Montoya and Mendes because he believes they have more power than the Election Committee and also because he doesn’t think the committee can self-check its actions.
“If the Election Committee is the one who started this in the first place chances are they aren’t going to be the ones to overturn it,” he said.
Recent ASU student government disqualifications
ASASU West President Andrew Clark said Thursday night student government disqualifications are a longstanding tradition at ASU.
Clark said during his election campaign last year, his opponent was disqualified midway through the election period. His opponent Gary Galvan, however, was reinstated and the election period was extended by a few days. Clark said his opponent was reinstated because many students at West campus felt the elections code was cheap.
“I was willing to listen to that,” he said. “Nobody wants to be the president of Chernobyl or the US before the Civil War. We wanted to make sure everybody was on the same page.”
Clark also said the previous year in Tempe student Mark Appleton became president after his opponent, who had been declared the election’s winner a few days earlier, was disqualified.
“That’s the one time that I can think of in ASU history where that (disqualification) actually stood up,” he said. “Mark Appleton as a president really struggled because he didn’t have a lot of credibility. People didn’t feel like he represented students. They felt like he represented himself.”
Clark said he thinks the Downtown campus is so young and its Election Code so unrefined that the Election Committee would be wise to make sure they do what’s in the best interest of students.
“The impact of moving forward with this would be devastating to the growth of downtown student government,” he said.
Clark, who has offered ASASUW’s Supreme Court for ASASUD to use in handling the appeal process of the disqualification, said at other ASU campuses the appeal would go to their supreme court, while at the Downtown campus it returns to the election committee.
“It’s like, ‘All right, would you like to disagree with the opinion you have?’” he said. “It’s just not going to happen.”
Clark said the last thing the Election Committee should do is simply sit on the current decision or they’ll be left with nearly 60 percent of students on the Downtown campus disgruntled.
“What needs to happen is the candidates sit down and talk it out with each other because the way it’s going to end today is just with a lot of disgruntled students, and that’s not a win for anybody,” he said.
Contact the reporter at salvador.rodriguez@asu.edu
