SGA elections fiasco

Instead of announcing results of the Student Government Association elections, Kerri Harris, SGA elections commissioner, announced to a packed corridor just outside the doors of the Cotillion Ballroom of the Smith-Brown Memorial Union, due to “bum” rosters, the votes would be thrown out and students would be forced to vote again today.
The decision came as a result of a disagreement between the election committee and SGA Adviser Russell Frazier who said he felt yesterday’s elections were not in the best interest of the student body.
“There was a glitch somewhere in our TNS system. The roster that they printed out for us today either had students on the wrong roster as far as classification and then we had students that had been purged from the roster,” Frazier said. “Sometimes we do have some situations during voting where some students may be on the wrong roster but that may be two or three people.”
According to Frazier, yesterday’s elections yielded an unusual amount of students who were placed in the wrong classification on rosters and who were not listed at all.
“Today was uncommonly a lot of students coming in that were not on the right roster, we begin to send those students to the registrars office for verification. Then, we began to get students who weren’t listed at all,” Frazier said. “We were able to identify that a lot of students were on the wrong rosters. A lot of students were voting on rosters they shouldn’t have. That was unfair to those class presidents and queens. After a while we caught it. And because we were sending so many students over, the registrars office caught it.”
Frazier said computers in the registrar’s office were down so they were unable to verify the enrollment of some students, causing them to be turned away from the polls.
“We had a situation where some students that wanted to, did not get the right to vote today,” he said. “You should be able to express that right as a student.”
No one from the registrar’s office was available at press time.
Amid the voting issues, the elections committee originally voted to keep the votes from yesterday’s elections but Frazier overruled the committee’s decision ultimately deciding to throw out the votes.
The decision threw candidates in an uproar as many found it to be unfair not only to them but to the student body as a whole.
Benita Nwokolo a candidate vying for SGA vice president said she was outraged with the decision.
“It’s not fair anyway you look at it,” Nwokolo said. “I really and truly feel that we will not get the same turnout tomorrow. I will not even be here tomorrow for the elections, I’m a nursing major and I have clinicals tomorrow. The whole nursing school has clinicals.”
Nwokolo said if she did lose this election she would attribute her loss to the voting problems.
Later, the elections committee met and decided to approach Frazier with what they believed would be a more viable solution as opposed to throwing out the votes.
“The elections committee has decided unanimously to count the votes from today and those students who were turned away today will get there chance to come back in tomorrow and vote from nine to five and we will tally all those votes together,” Harris said.
Harris said those students who voted today would not be able to vote again tomorrow, as those votes will have already been counted.
“We have a system of double checking where we are going to compare the new roster to the old roster and if you voted today, you will not be able to vote again tomorrow,” Harris said.
Frazier said he accepted the committee’s decision because it was fair for the student body.
“We had no viable solution before that’s why I wanted a new election,” Frazier said. “Now we do.”
The runoff debate has been pushed back to 7:00 p.m. in the Cotillion Ballroom, and the runoff elections will take place as scheduled on Wednesday.