Senator Rob Roy Controversy
In Februrary of 2005, Friends Urging Campus Kindness candidate Rob Roy had received the most votes for ASUCD senate. However, on the second day of the elections, due to his failure to include receipts with his expenditures statement, he was ordered disqualified by the Elections Committee. The following codes were cited as reasons for this:
ASUCD Government Codes Chapter 1: Election Regulations Section 112(8):
Note, these are the relevant code sections as of 2/25/05, and should be used for historical purposes, and are not necessarily current.
A. No candidate, ticket, or Ballot Measure campaign coordinator (pro/con) in a General election or Recall election may falsify1 expenditure forms. This may include but is not limited to: False signature, incomplete forms2 not claiming purchases/donation used for campaign purposes.
B. If the Election Committee find that any candidate or ticket have falsified their expenditure form(s) they may be assessed three(3) violation point therefore; may be disqualified from the General Election determined by a unanimous vote of the Election Committee upon severity.
Aftermath
Despite the Election Committee's view, many individuals in the wiki community pointed out that the Elections Code did not provide for disqualification in instances of mere "incompleteness" of forms, but only in instances of the intent or effect of falsification. The items for which he was missing receipts were for cans of Spray Paint. Although the Committee called the store to verify that his listed purchase price was correct (which he was), they unanimously decided that his failure to include receipts constituted a violation of the Government Code section above.
However, there was widespread protest on throughout the Campus Community (as well as DavisWiki), and commentators voiced the opinion that the Elections Committee had deliberately misread the plain meaning of the code section.
The aftermath was that they decided to overrule themselves (not that there is any procedure for this, either), on the grounds that it would be procedurally improper to disqualify someone after votes had been recorded. There is some speculation that this was a way to avoid being yet again being overruled by the ASUCD Court, something several persons in positions of authority had nearly guaranteed. The effect of the committee's reversal was to permit the election of Senator Rob Roy, with the highest number of tallied votes.
Footnotes
1. Note that the subject of the entire subsection is the issue of falsification.
2. Clearly an incompleteness (omission of the truth) can construed and proved to be false, and this is obviously why "incomplete forms" can be grounds for disqualification. But this example of falseness does not transform all cases of incompleteness into falsification. Rather, it refers to incompleteness with the intent and/or effect of false statement
