T. Greg Doucette, a junior in computer science, turned in his resignation as technical advisor for student elections Monday afternoon after leaving Kristy Craig, a freshman in political science, off the first year undergraduate Student Senate ballot by mistake.

According to Megan Peters, Elections Commission chair and a sophomore in English, the Elections Commission is putting forth its own appeal to remedy the situation.

“An appeal has been made by the Elections Commission to appeal the undergraduate freshman election,” she said. “There are only three confirmed commissioners, so it will only take two of us to uphold the appeal.”

Doucette said he requested the voter roll two weeks ago and didn’t receive it until last Friday.

“A test ballot is required to be up the Thursday before an election,” Doucette said.

Because of the tardiness of the voter roll, which is a list of the students qualified to vote in any given election, the test ballot was only posted for 12 hours.

After several phone calls Technician made from about 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. yesterday, sources shifted the blame for the incident between four different individuals, as well as the administration and Student Government.

Student Body Treasurer Adam Compton indicated that the Information Technology Division, blames the tardiness of the voter roll on Tom Stafford, vice chancellor for student affairs, because according to ITD, the roll needed Stafford’s approval before they released it.

Officials from ITD could not be reached for comment Monday afternoon.

Stafford indicated that the only role he played in this particular election was to make sure the system checked the classification of students to make sure they are eligible to vote.

He said he appointed Evelyn Reiman, the associate vice chancellor for student affairs, to work with the Elections Commission to ensure the election ran smoothly.

Reiman said she appointed Johnathan Idol, a business and technology applications analyst for Registration and Records, who was also unavailable for comment, to work with Doucette and his fellow technical administrator Andrew Barnes, a graduate student, to get the voter roll uploaded and ready.

“Dr. Stafford indicated that voter rolls couldn’t just be handed over to the Elections Commission,” Reiman said.

This is due, she said, to regulations set forth by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

Peters speculated that the delay in receiving the voter rolls was due to complications with the previous spring election, which involved voter eligibility.

She also stated that although the test ballot was posted late and was only up for 12 hours, the candidates were familiar with the procedure for checking the test ballot to make sure their names were included as stated in election statutes.

No one involved in the incident is entirely sure of what went wrong, but two people in particular are taking some, if not all of the blame.

Doucette shouldered the brunt of the screw up, but Student Body President Will Quick was quick to throw Student Government and the candidates for the freshman election into the equation.

“[Craig] did not notify us that she was not on the ballot until the real election started,” Quick said. “We did run a test and we did notify the candidates — I don’t know if [Craig] was out of town — I don’t know what the situation was.”

Quick explained, however, that Student Government would take full blame for the blunder.

“I am not going to take the blame off myself — I am not going to blame anybody,” he said. “Student Government is willing to take the blame for it.”

Doucette expressed his remorse for leaving Craig off the ballot.

“I have run for office before, and I know what it is like,” he said. “And to find out that you are not even on the ballot because someone screwed up — it is heartbreaking — it is really tough for me to articulate.”

Peters indicated that the Elections Commission cannot process the appeal until the current election is complete. Therefore the appeal, she said, should go through on Wednesday.

She said if the appeal is approved, the first year undergraduate Student Senate election will be redone next Monday and Tuesday.

Peters added that the graduate election that started Monday will stand as long as there are no appeals.