Finding that the elections board does not, in fact, have the power to unilaterally dismiss candidates or enforce state laws or university conduct codes (who would have thought?), the ASUO Constitution Court has summarily reversed the boards’ decision to remove the Oregon Action Team from the ballot and dismissed the grievance filed against it by David Griffin. From the ruling:

Indeed, it is neither within the its [sic] jurisdiction, nor the intended function of this Court, nor any other body within the ASUO, to hear, review, or otherwise consider any allegation of violations under Oregon law, or the Student Conduct Code. Should a member of this Association be arrested, held, charged, tried, found, convicted, or similarly disposed under Oregon law or the Conduct Code, resulting from actions of a type alleged here, or any other related action or activities, then the Court may consider such evidence in its own adjudication.

Without such a process duly undertaken by the proper authorities on the respective matters, the Court does not consider any statements that pass judgment as to the illegality of any alleged actions.

Upon hearing the court’s ruling, elections board chair Aaron Tuttle reportedly roared mightily, flipped a nearby table and exclaimed, “I AM THE LAW!” Okay, that’s not true.

The silver lining behind all of this is that we are actually getting somewhere close to clearly defining the role of the elections board, the Con Court, etc.

Finally, we can get back to the business of electing people based on cronyism and colorful t-shirts – y’know, the way a representative republic is supposed to work.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 16th, 2009 at 11:16 by CJ Ciaramella and is filed under ASUO, Elections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.