Run-off elections held in A&S
Published April 15, 2008
After more than a month of technical problems and personal conflicts, the MSA Senate election should finally be over Thursday night.
During a special meeting Monday night, members of the Missouri Students Association Senate, Board of Elections Commissioners and Student Court met to discuss lingering problems associated with this year’s elections and to determine how to smoothly conduct a run-off election between candidates in one of the four schools in which second elections were required.
The discussion was held “to try and find a common ground on which these elections can be ended honorably and fairly,” according to ground rules passed out to those at the meeting. Attendees included BEC vice chairmen Ian Krause and Justin Mohn, Senate Speaker Jonathan Mays, Senate Parliamentarian Amanda Shelton, Senate Clerk Allison Horne, Academic Affairs Chairwoman Phyllis Williams, outgoing Student Court Chief Justice Drew Weber and new Chief Justice Jonathan Sandhu. Mohn previously worked for The Maneater.
During the meeting, an outline was created for a run-off election to break a tie in the College of Arts and Science election. The decision to hold a run-off election was made Friday afternoon after the BEC decided to throw out previously accepted ballots that were cast before the 6 p.m. start time of the election last week.
Some students voted early because the ballots were sent out using the Division of Information Technology’s mass e-mail system about 15 minutes earlier than the BEC had planned.
The BEC had initially said they would conditionally accept the ballots as a means to break a tie, however, after an informal discussion with members of the Student Court on Thursday night, they decided to throw them out.
Krause said at Monday’s meeting that the BEC certified elections in the Trulaske College of Business, College of Engineering and School of Journalism but needed to decertify the College of Arts and Science election in order to hold the run-off election.
According to MSA bylaws, in the case of a tie candidates who were successfully elected shall vote via paper ballot to break a tie between the candidates who tied to fill the final seat. Seventeen newly elected senators will choose between John Henry Wolpers and Daniel Thode.
Those present at the meeting agreed that the run-off election would take place by 6 p.m. Thursday to meet bylaw requirements that the election be certified eight days after the conclusion of the election.
Krause said the BEC would e-mail Wolpers and Thode, asking them to submit short biographies to be e-mailed to the 17 senators who will break the tie.
The BEC then will accept paper ballots from senators Wednesday and count them by Thursday.
Meeting attendees also discussed a petition some senators, including Shelton and Senator Marissa Sharkey, planned to file with the Student Court regarding how the election was handled.
Sandhu said he did not receive any petitions from anyone, including Shelton or Sharkey.
After Mays pointed out that the deadline to file any petition was Friday afternoon, Shelton said she had made the decision not to file a petition.
“When a meeting was held last Thursday with (Sharkey), it became clear to me that screwing up fell on a lot of our shoulders, including mine,” she said. “I sat in on Operations Committee meetings where the election was discussed and decisions were made. A lot of us should have taken more action. There are better ways to ensure next year’s election runs more smoothly.”
Shelton suggested creating a voter bill of rights and candidate bill of rights to include in MSA bylaws to help avoid problems like the ones that occurred this year.
Attendees agreed to plan to present a list of grievances with this year’s election to discuss at an Operations Committee meeting April 22, at which point committee members and attendees will further discuss ways to include the bill of rights and other rule revisions in MSA’s bylaws.
