2008 Woodie Awards
Feinberg disqualified from senate presidential election
Andy Blais
Issue date: 2/29/08 Section: News
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Last night, before counting the presidential ballots, the elections committee voted to disqualify Feinberg and Klos for several elections rules violations.
These include allegations of members of the Greek community and other student supporters in the Memorial Union yelling to support Fienberg, pens being dropped off at the polling station with the words Feinberg/Klos written on them, T-shirts being worn at the polling booth and an advertisement for Feinberg and Klos hanging in the Latin American Student Association room in the union.
Feinberg and Klos plan to appeal the decision by the committee to disqualify them to the Rules and Ethics Committee. They are planning to base their appeal on the senate bylaws that say, "The Committee on Elections shall publish the numerical results of all elections and referenda as soon as possible after the close of the polls, marking this report 'Unofficial: Subject to Challenge.'"
"There is no campaigning in the Union. Period," Cristin Langworthy, chairwoman of the Elections Committee and the Academic Affairs Committee.
The Elections Committee, which consists of Langworthy, Vice President Ryan Battis, Student Senator Maria Rice, Campus Affairs Chairwoman Nicole Pelletier and Student Senator Audrey Ruskowski, voted on whether or not they had seen rules violations that were grounds for disqualification.
"We have to vote on whether or not to disqualify the candidate," Langworthy said. "Did you see anything that was technically breaking of the rules, and it was an obvious yes, especially the poster."
Of the five-member committee, four voted in favor of disqualification and one, Battis, abstained.
Bedard did not want to speak about the elections ruling.
"No comment at this time, I want to wait till after Rules and Ethics [Committee] makes a decision and senate decides what to do," he said.
Ahrens said that there were definite rule violations that he saw during the campaign and that he would have protested the election anyway. "I understand the decision, however, it's tough for me," he said.
Ahrens added that he was proud of the way that he ran his campaign. "I was as ethical as I could be," he said.
As for right now, Ahrens said is torn as to what to feel.
"I'm in purgatory right now, I don't feel good, I don't feel bad … I don't feel like I won, I don't feel like I lost," he said.
Ahrens hopes that the Rules and Ethics Committee and possibly senate will make this their top priority and make a decision as fast as possible. He believes that the whole situation gives senate a bad name.
"I want this position so bad and I know that I'm the right person for the job, but I didn't want to win this way," Ahrens said.
Feinberg and Klos were not happy with the decision, but they said they saw the disqualification coming because of the LASA poster.
"We personally do not admit any violations, " Fienberg said. "Any violations that were supposedly taking place were beyond our control."
Klos said the poster violation was completely out of their control.
"I personally gave that poster to LASA," he said. "I asked them to put it up in their office and I asked the president of LASA to inform her group that we were running ... Obviously if I had seen the poster I would have clearly asked them to remove it from facing outward in their window, and I think that's obviously a clear violation. But again, it comes down to how am I supposed to control someone's posting of a poster."
The Rules and Ethics Committee, whose members include Allen Petit, Gabe Mancuso, Maxwell Adepujo, and Jennifer Burkhardt, will likely hear the complaint by Tuesday and have a bill to the senate by next Wednesday if they decide against the disqualification.
At that point, the senate would vote on the bill to either support Rules and Ethics' overturning of the disqualification or disqualify Feinberg and Klos.
Then the senate would approve the election by a vote on a bill of election confirmation.