A senator on the Election Commission resigned from her post in the final minutes of Wednesday’s Senate meeting, declaring her displeasure with the “shady” campaigning of one candidate in this year’s Associated Student Government elections.
“I’ll be honest, there were some things that were shady during the election,” said Meredith Kesner, an off-campus senator, as she addressed senators and three newly-elected executive board members who were sworn in to office only an hour earlier.
Kesner later told The Daily she was motivated to resign because she was disturbed by an incident involving Communication sophomore Alex Lurie, the new student services vice president who garnered 52.7 percent of student votes Tuesday to defeat Communication junior Sara Whitaker.
Lurie told The Daily he received a 50 percent discount on fliers because the printer made an error. An Election Commission deputy stamped Lurie’s fliers and signed off on the receipt, said election commissioner Adam Forsyth, because the discount was allowed by election guidelines.
But Kesner said she was concerned the discount gave Lurie an unfair advantage over his opponent and could have influenced Tuesday’s outcome. She thought the issue would have come up at the Election Commission meeting Monday night, which she missed due to illness.
“There was no clear violation,” Kesner said. “There was no breaking of the rules. There was just shady business.”
Lurie returned half his fliers before distribution, he said, because he did not want the misunderstanding to jeopardize his candidacy. But Kesner said Election Commission member John Hughes misfiled the receipt, which she found later and discussed with Forsyth.
“I noticed a discrepancy between the number of fliers and the receipt,” Kesner said.
Lurie called Kesner’s accusations “offensive.”
“This has been 100 percent legitimate and the Election Commission has said that,” Lurie said.
Kesner, however, was not alone in expressing her sentiments. Outgoing Executive Vice President Bryan Tolles said he believes one of the Election Commission members gave Lurie “preferential treatment.”
Tolles said Hughes unofficially worked on Lurie’s campaign, signed off on the dubious receipt and didn’t alert the commission. Had another Election Commission member been stamping posters on Sunday, Tolles said, Lurie’s 50 percent discount would have been taken before the whole committee that night.
“(Forsyth) knew about it before everyone else and he didn’t do anything about it,” Tolles said.
According to Tolles, Forsyth told Hughes, the new treasurer of ASG, that if he did not reveal any ties to a campaign, the commission would not consider Hughes a campaign worker.
Because Hughes — a board member for Students Publishing Co., which oversees The Daily, and a former Daily forum editor — did not reveal his alleged ties to Lurie’s campaign, Tolles said that Lurie received “preferential treatment” from the Election Commission.
Lurie said no one on the Election Commission worked on his campaign.
“Unfortunately people may not be happy with the results and they can’t get over it,” Lurie said.
But Tamara Kagel, ASG’s former student services vice president, said she thought otherwise.
“I think it was pretty public that (Hughes) was working in Alex’s campaign and working on the Election Commission,” Kagel said.
Tolles said he was not completely sure if election outcomes were affected. But he said this incident dictates a need for the Election Commission to be run by non-ASG members.
“We should not allow insiders to take advantage of rules,” he said. “We should encourage students to get involved in the process to ensure a more competent election.”
