Dreier Carr
The Elections Commission held a hearing Monday night and rejected proposed violations called against Adam Compton by Kim Moser in the race for Senior Class President.
Moser, a junior in social studies education, filed the complaint for destruction of campaign materials that stated that she and Sen. Amber Joyner had seen one of Compton’s supporters remove one of Moser’s campaign signs and place it in Compton’s truck.
She had filed for an appeal in the race after the election because she said if the violations had been made public beforehand, they could have significantly affected the election results.
But the commission did not hear the appeal because they ruled Moser’s complaint invalid, as it was not filed within the 24-hour period to submit a complaint after an incident has occurred, Elections Chairman Andrew Tucker said.
“That appeal was contingent on whether or not it was a violation,” Tucker, a senior in political science, said. “Since we determined we couldn’t hear it, it wasn’t a violation. And since it wasn’t a violation, there was no [hearing for an] appeal.”
Moser said she hesitated to write a formal complaint at first because she wanted to address Compton personally, according to Joyner.
“The conversation we had is that [Moser] really wanted to talk to [Compton] first, but she didn’t want it to be a he-said, she-said [issue] because she didn’t want it to get ugly,” Joyner said.
But Joyner said, based on the rules, the decision was fair.
“It was one of those gray areas [in the Student Body Statutes],” she said, adding that the Student Senate will probably address the rules because of their ambiguity.
Tucker agreed that the rules need to be addressed.
“The 24-hour time limit needs to be evaluated [about filing complaints],” he said.
Compton said the commission did the right thing in upholding the rules.
“The results of the hearing were exactly how I assumed it would go because the job of the Elections Commission is to hear violations of the statutes and interpret the statutes, and the statutes were extremely clear on this issue,” he said.
He made it clear that if he had known what his supporter had done right away, he would have made him put Moser’s sign back in place.
After the ruling, Tucker stressed that both Compton and Moser were of high integrity, and said he did not want either of their reputations to be damaged by the hearing.
The results for the student body elections will be released today, and Tucker said there were no changes to the final list of candidates.
Moser refused to comment after the hearing.
The commission certified all election results Monday evening with no changes made to the unofficial results they released March 26.