Election should 'start anew'

Today the polls close for the GPSA presidential election, but Council Chair Danny Hernandez wants to call the whole thing off.
Hernandez cited three errors that occurred throughout the election process as reason to scrap the results and start anew.
“There have been too many irregularities in this election,” he said in an e-mail.

Early Wednesday morning, the GPSA Elections Committee realized that 180 of 5,500 graduate and professional students were not invited to vote in the election.

On Monday, 62 votes were cast out due to the possibility of voters casting in votes numerous times. And, early in the election, candidate Martin Gutierrez’ name was misspelled in a Daily Lobo advertisement.

“With there being so many discrepancies in this election process, I call that we have another election as soon as is possible,” Hernandez said.

In response, the GPSA Elections Committee issued a statement. The committee said it would seek the input of the GPSA Court of Review, the GPSA’s judicial body. Also, Hernandez asked the GPSA council for input.

“We strongly believe that aforementioned irregularities are unavoidable consequences resulting from unforeseen circumstances,” the statement reads. Decisions about rescheduling or calling special elections lie outside our authority.”

Until the Court of Review issues a recommendation, however, the election will conclude today as planned.

The elections committee also said many of the problems Hernandez cited stemmed from larger issues out of the elections committee’s control.
“Most problems related to this election are institutional, while a few stem from the mid-semester resignation and replacement of GPSA’s elections chair,” the statement reads.

The committee pointed to a fuzzy policy with maintaining a Listserv of GPSA members.

“We, the elections committee are committed to ensuring that all eligible students can vote in this election,” the statement read. “We have been diligently working with IT and Student Activities to reconcile inconsistencies we identified related to determining the population of eligible voters. IT found that 180

graduate students in the BSN-NURS-NU College of Nursing and the DM (MD) Program were not among those invited to the election. We sent notice of the election and an invitation to those affected this morning.” Candidates and GPSA officers were also informed and encouraged to reach out to these students.

“Currently, responsibility for maintaining a list of GPSA members is not clearly outlined and increases the probability of inadvertently excluding entire constituencies,” the statement reads. “Having this information ahead of time will greatly assist in streamlining future elections.”