Irregularities plague vote for SGA executive board
Reporting about the SGA, not a record of it: The Johns Hopkins News-Letter published this and the SGA did not write it, file it, or approve it. The archive holds it because the article itself uses the phrases “sga”, “student government” and “student council”.
Summary
- The Johns Hopkins News-Letter article covers alleged rule violations, disputed vote counting and the appeals process in the 2008–09 SGA executive-board election.
- The News-Letter reported that five of nine candidates were alleged to have broken election rules; the article says the violations could lead to disqualification, while preliminary results listed Dan Teran, Evan Lazerowitz, Yasin Akbari and Tim Miller as the expected winners.
- The paper reported that four candidates were cited over campaign-finance reports, while Sonny Chandrasekhar was cited for soliciting votes by email; Chandrasekhar said, "I did in fact send out an e-mail to my fraternity. I misinterpreted the rules - I told them to vote for me after the appropriate time,"
- The article adds that Chandrasekhar appealed his disqualification, with results due Friday, and said, "I didn't decide to appeal because I thought Dan would be a bad president. I'm more than confident that he'd do a good job as president. I decided to appeal simply to see what the results would have been,"
- The reporter writes that seniors were able to vote even though their votes were not meant to count, so those votes were removed by hand; the article says that including them would have made David Rokeach the vice-presidential winner.
- The article says that the appeals board includes current Student Council President Bierbryer, the Director of Student Involvement and another member, and that its closed-door decisions are final.