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ASUO ELECTIONS ’12: Con Court Does Good, Invalidates That Entire Election We Just Had

Decided April 11, 2012. Opinion by ASUO Con Court Justice Schultz:

Since the effects of the “Katie and Alex” campaign’s
egregious misconduct is immeasurable and unknowable,
the Court concludes that the only fair remedy is to
invalidate the Primary Election results, for the ASUO
Executive race only. To this extent, all three ASUO
Executive candidates who participated in the Primary
Election, excluding Katie Taylor and Alex Sylvester, shall
be permitted to run in a new election commencing Week 3
of Spring Term.

While the ASUO Elections Board ruled to simply replace Katie & Alex with Ben & Lamar on the upcoming ASUO General Election ballot, the ASUO Constitution Court does something important for once and pulls rank on the Board’s ruling, annulling the first primary election altogether. Now another primary will be held during next week (Week 3), including all of the same executive candidates as before, except for Katie Taylor and Alex Sylvester. Everybody be cool, they’re still out of the race.

This decision comes as a result of a petition for review filed by Blake Sedgley, campaign manager of the We Are Oregon executive campaign. We Are Oregon was actually requesting that only the votes for Katie & Alex be invalidated. Had this been granted, We Are Oregon would have earned %54.7 of the votes, and actually would have won the whole goddamn thing. Here’s the excerpt from Sedgley’s grievance:

Petitioners [We Are Oregon] urge the Constitution Court to overturn Respondent’s [ASUO Elections Board] determination that votes for Katie Taylor and Alex Sylvester be unallocated. Petitioners ask that Constitution Court declare the votes for Katie Taylor and Alex Sylvester invalid.

Well in a surprising, intrepid turn of events, the ASUO Constitutional Court makes a coherent decision to throw out all executive votes, deeming the entire executive primary invalid. Here’s the relevant part of the Court’s decision:

In this case, the
election results were skewed by the misconduct of
members of the “Katie and Alex” campaign. But the
Petitioner [Sedgley, We Are Oregon] suggests an unacceptable remedy: the
disenfranchisement of hundreds of student voters.

While the applicable federal prohibitions against such
treatment is bountiful, the Court need look no further
than Bush v. Gore. There, the Supreme Court concluded
that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment guarantees to individuals that their ballots
cannot be devalued by “later arbitrary and disparate
treatment”. 531 U.S. 98 (2000). The Petitioner literally
asks this Court to recognize some votes and deny equal
weight to others based on the voter’s selection.

Shoulda’ known that George W. Bush was gonna work his way into this somehow!

And to address the reason why I’ve italicized “executive” just prior to the excerpt– the Ol’ Dirty Emerald addresses this decision today in their mildly-opinionated editorial, where they get all hot-and-bothered about the fact that the Court only overturned the votes that were cast for executive positions, and allowed the votes that were cast for senatorial positions to remain valid:

Though the Executive primaries were restarted, the senatorial primaries (with victors from the Katie and Alex campaign, including a certain Manny Garcia) will not be revoted upon.

Considering that students generally vote across slates, and that the phishing scam likely gave many senators on the Katie and Alex slate an advantage over their competition, a revote should have been ordered for the senatorial primaries as well.

Did the senators running under Katie and Alex’s slate have access to illegally acquired phone numbers from their competition? If Katie and Alex hadn’t made it through primaries, would their senators? We don’t know, but the immeasurability of this hacking scam is reason enough to reset not only the executive primaries, but the entire ASUO election.

Man, ain’t nothin’ like reading an ODE opinion piece. It’s almost as if I can hear the bitchy eleven year-old who wrote it.

Heeeeeeeyyyyyyy that doesn’t count !!!! Nuh-uhhhhh !!!!!! Re-do !!!!!!

Look. We’re a hopeful bunch here at the OC, and while we still wait in vain for a cruel-and-unusual-yet-still-appropriate punishment to be cast upon Mr. & Mrs. Denson and friends, unlike the Ol’ Dirty, we’re just not that concerned with the future-less future Senator Manny Garcia, or the possibility of Katie & Alex slate having access to “illegally acquired phone numbers from their competition.”

Leave the commentatin’ to us, Ol’ Dirty colleagues. We keep our expectations of all ASUO branches nice and low, then focus on the bigger implications– like the fact that this decision is proof that the Con Court lives and functions as it should.

It’s about fucking time.

 

 

  1. Ben Rudin says:

    In fairness, Mr. Sedgley was arguing that Rule 3.10, which calls for invalidation of votes if a candidate withdraws, is the only rule that talks about how to deal with votes for a candidate that goes off the ballot. The rules did not specify what happens with a candidate who is disqualified, and the argument was that since the Elections Board has no basis for saying that invalidating the votes for a disqualified candidate was anymore disenfranchisement than invalidating the votes for a withdrawn candidate, they ought to be treated the same. Con Court instead threw out Rule 3.10 saying it was unconstitutional, and Mr. Sedgley said on the ODE Facebook page that he thinks that decision was thorough and fair. I agree with him.

  2. RL says:

    Except that in Bush v. Gore, the USSC ruled that their decision in that case could only be used for….wait for it….Bush v. Gore.

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