The decision to overturn the Board of Elections’ ruling of two disqualified candidates was announced Friday morning, allowing a running pair to remain in the race for student body president and vice president.
Taylor Pulliam, a third-year studying political science, and his running mate Catherine Duble, a third-year studying business administration, have won the appeal for their disqualification over attendance requirements needed to run in the election of student body president and vice president.
“One of the qualifications or requirements to run for student body president/vice president is that one person on your ticket has to attend either half of the student senate meetings or half of the executive cabinet meetings of any session while you’re a student,” said Anna Kate Whitfield, a fourth-year studying political science and Board of Elections Chair.
When reviewing the requirements for candidates, Whitfield said she did not find either Pulliam’s or Duble’s name on the attendance sheets for the 97th, 96th or 95th student government session, which led to the disqualification.
According to Pulliam, he attended eight of 14 student senate meetings, which was not represented in the attendance records.
“The attendance records were only accurately depicting the attendance of people who were already in student government or affiliated organizations with student government in general,” Pulliam said. “They didn’t really take accurate attendance for guests… I didn’t say I was running for student body president at the time because of rules saying you can’t declare your candidacy.”
Pulliam and Duble took their disqualification to the Special Review Committee. The committee is composed of the student senate president, the president of the Union Activity Board and the president of the Inter-Residence Council.
“[The Special Review Committee is] set up to oversee the [Board of Elections] for special cases like this when people disagree with the board and decisions they make or after they’ve been through a violation hearing and then the appeals process and still don’t agree,” Whitfield said. “The Special Review Committee is supposed to look at the case and see whether or not the board acted incorrectly… In cases like this, there’s someone else checking, keeping a balance so the board can’t just disqualify people.”
The appeal was approved Friday morning after the Special Review Committee heard both the stance of the Board of Elections and of Pulliam and Duble.
“We heard both sides, we asked a few questions, but based off the information that the candidates had received regarding attendance and qualifications for that, that’s what it came down to,” said Student Senate President Mitchell Moravec, a fifth-year studying material science and engineering and psychology. “[The committee] decided that yes, based off of what the situation was, it was accountable for their negligence of not having their name on attendance sheets and overturned the boards’ decision to disqualify them.”
Moravec said that this is the first election cycle where student body president and vice president candidates do not have to serve in Student Government prior to filing for elections and only need to meet the attendance requirement. Because neither Pulliam nor Duble have any Student Government experience, they needed to provide evidence that proved Pulliam had attended the meetings.
“We had some testimonies and some witnesses that could verify my attendance at the meetings,” Pulliam said. “After looking at the records, we could prove that the procedure that they took for taking attendance didn’t accurately reflect those regular students who came. That was the reason I wasn’t on any of the attendance records because they weren’t taking attendance for just guests like that.”
According to Whitfield now that there are four tickets for student body president and vice president, she anticipates a runoff election.
“We have four tickets for our student body president/vice president,” Whitfield said. “Which most likely means we will go into a runoff. To win that seat you need 40 percent of the vote, which with that many candidates is really hard to do.”
Candidate campaigning began Friday morning and will continue until the election reveal Thursday. In the event of a runoff, the final election results will be revealed on March 1.