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Mays accepts results for seven elections; BEC invalidates four

The BEC hopes to conduct new elections in the College of Arts and Science, School of Journalism, College of Business and College of Engineering the week after spring break.

By Anna Koeppel and Jenna Youngs
March 21, 2008

MSA Senate Speaker Jonathan Mays announced late Thursday night that he would accept the certification of Missouri Students Association Senate election results of seven colleges and schools, and that the Board of Elections Commissioners have agreed to invalidate the results of the four largest colleges and schools.

The College of Arts and Science, School of Journalism, College of Business and College of Engineering will hold new elections to determine Senate representation from those schools, Mays said.

BEC Chairman Geoff Grammer said the members of the BEC decided to re-conduct elections for the four schools "no matter what," and came to that conclusion before they met with Mays Thursday night.

"We told Jon we'd be happy to re-do those votes because they were so close," Grammer said.

Mays said that the margins in the elections conducted for those four schools were so close that the BEC agreed to hold new elections within those schools. Mays also said in an e-mail that the BEC will contact the deans from each school to determine how to conduct the new elections without using the Division of Information Technology's faulty electronic ballot.

Grammer said the BEC will contact the deans of the four schools Friday to request permission to conduct the new election via each school or college's e-mail, but that the BEC plans to hold elections immediately after spring break.

"As long as the deans agree to it, the elections will be the week after spring break," Grammer said.

Thursday evening, Mays and 34 other students submitted a petition to the Student Court requesting an investigation of the election.

In an e-mail to the Senate Listserv, MSA Chief Justice and the 34 other students who signed onto the petition, Mays said the results from seven schools would not be impacted significantly by any of the issues raised in the earlier petition for investigation of the election. The schools Mays will accept the certified results for include the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources; the College of Education; the College of Human Environmental Sciences; the School of Health Professions; the School of Nursing; the School of Social Work; and the School of Natural Resources, which for voting purposes was separate from CAFNR.

Problems cited in the petition included that an unknown number of students were unable to vote using the electronic ballot provided by DoIT because of a technical problem that DoIT Director Terry Robb said developers haven't yet been able to identify, and that a new ballot that needed to be created after an initial ballot was released when the election started at 6 p.m. Monday night did not include directions for students to be able to vote for more than one candidate. Students who voted between when the first ballot was released and when the second one was released at 9:22 p.m. Monday needed to resubmit their votes, however 203 did not do so. Mays said the BEC ran a statistical analysis and the margin is large enough to impact the outcomes of the elections in the Arts and Science, Journalism, Business and Engineering schools after factoring in the problems with the elections.

Grammer said Mays agreed to no longer pursue the petition that was filed Thursday afternoon. Mays said he's not going to request a specific response to the petition because the BEC agreed to re-conduct the elections.

Mays said the BEC agreeing to invalidate the elections in the four largest schools was a "positive step."

"It's the best-case scenario after everything's that's happened," he said.