Fall 2005 ASUCD Election

Notes

The two Independent candidates (Brian McFadden and Joe Harney) called themselves “United Student Alliance” but I would not consider it a slate because they formed it during the election and did not really run together as a slate.

Natalia Farhadmotamed and Kareem Salem were actually ineligible to run for ASUCD Senate during this election as a result of both being on Disciplinary Probation with the university. However, they sought election anyway, most likely out of ignorance of the rules that prohibited them from doing so. Unfortunately the appropriate Student Judicial Affairs check was not done that would have caught this issue before they were certified as official candidates. As Chair of the Elections Committee at the time, I thought both the academic and disciplinary checks were done simulatenously by the ASUCD employee who did these checks for the Elections Committee. (Students do not have access to this university database.) It was not until after the election that SJA informed us that two of the elected candidates were on Disciplinary Probation and that information is not in the database used to verify academic standing.

It is difficult to say what the outcome would have been had Natalia Farhadmotamed and Kareem Salem not been on the ballot because their lack of presence would most likely have lowered the turnout for the election since their core supporters may not have turned out to vote. However, if you run the data excluding them from the election, the result is the same slate breakdown because Katie Webber (Student Focus) and Jenny Yu (LEAD) are elected in their places.

An aside: in the past, SJA has cleared up issues with students on Disciplinary Probation to allow them to run for ASUCD office. Essentially SJA will cut their probation short if their probation is coming to an end around the time they would take office. Based on conversations with people that would have made this decision, it is quite likely that SJA would have shortened Kareem Salem’s probation (which was ending shortly anyway) and allowed him to run for Senate. On the other hand, it is very unlikely that SJA would have done the same for Natalia Farhadmotamed as her Disciplinary Probation was not set to end as soon.

Go here for more details on the resulting situation.

Both ballot measures passed but I do not have the exact numbers.