Column: Election Fraud Destroys Uosa Legitimacy
Published: April 12, 2010
Editors note: Ally Glavas, UOSA president-elect, and Jeff Riles, UOSA Election Board chairman, both declined invitations to write a counterpoint .
In what can only be described as a completely predictable failure, the UOSA election board falsely claimed that Ally Glavas and Zac McCullock won the election for UOSA president and vice president.
It has become clear throughout the year that almost no one in UOSA has bothered to read the constitution that is supposed to guide its actions. This occasion is no different.
According to the UOSA constitution “the student president and vice president shall be popularly elected together by majority vote of the ballots cast in an election for that purpose.” In the event that nobody receives a majority of the ballots cast, the top two candidates “shall stand in a run-off election no later than one week after the primary election.”
In this most recent presidential election, 5,282 ballots were cast. The UOSA uses an instant run-off voting system whereby voters are asked to rank the candidates in order of preference from one to four in this case. When counting the ballots, the election board tallies the first preference of every voter. If no candidate has received a majority of the votes, the candidate receiving the least number of votes is eliminated. All of the voters who ranked the eliminated candidate No. 1 then has their No. 2 preference counted. This process continues until someone has a majority.
At the end of this process for the most recent election, there were only two tickets standing. The Glavas ticket had received 2,544 votes and the Zenteno ticket had received 2,281 votes. Therefore, the election board claimed the Glavas ticket had won. But wait, there were 5,282 ballots cast and Glavas only received 2,544 votes, which is 48 percent. The last time I checked 48 percent does not constitute a majority. Under constitutional rules, a run-off election featuring just the Zenteno and Glavas tickets should have been run a week after the first election.
That someone did not catch this failure is stunning. Surely someone in UOSA has a calculator or can do some quick math and realize no candidate received a majority vote of the ballots cast.
That no one did catch this failure raises an eyebrow from me. Was this intentional? As someone who pays close attention to UOSA and the elections, it was clear the Glavas campaign was the ticket preferred overwhelmingly by UOSA insiders. Their campaign shirts could be seen at all of the congressional meetings. The UOSA president whose office is actually charged with running the election, made a video endorsing her candidacy. Even the presumably impartial election board chair, demonstrated himself to be a partisan given his behavior on election night when he participated in the celebration party of Glavas’ sham victory.
What is sad about this whole thing is this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to election irregularities. There were 23 grievances filed against various candidates, many of which were rejected. Some of the rejected grievances were about superfluous things with little provided evidence, but other grievances that were rejected are stunningly unethical.
One grievance that stunned me was a tactic used by the Glavas campaign to pressure individuals into voting for them. According to the election board report, a large number of members from the Glavas campaign stood outside of Couch Cafeteria with laptops and stopped students walking by to ask them to vote. While the Glavas campaign maintains students were not asked to vote for anyone in particular, anyone with a shred of intelligence realizes what was going on. Yet the election board rejected this grievance and claimed that this sort of behavior was not a violation of the requirement for a secret ballot.
I could go on, but there really is no reason to. This year has been a year of disaster for the UOSA government and this really caps it off. Any claim to legitimacy the student government had was lacking to begin with but has now been completely shattered. While it has been suggested for years that UOSA was a powerless body of resume-builders, it has now officially become a totally illegitimate irrelevant joke.
Comments
oustudent2013 1 year, 10 months ago
The majority does not mean the most. Majority means a number or percentage equaling more than half of a total. That's why the constitution says that if no candidate recieves the majority, the top candidates have a runoff election. And to answer your question, NO. 48%+43%+5%+5% does not equal 100 percent. It equals 101%.
Terminate_Damnation 1 year, 10 months ago
I admire you, Bruenig, for willingly bringing upon yourself the sh*tstorm that is about to come your way for writing this column.
But to tell the complete truth, I'm sure most people who voted voted for Ally and Zac. If only 48 percent voted for Ally and Zac is that not that a majority? If 48 percent voted for Ally and Zac, 43 percent voted for Franz and Cory, and then let's imagine 5 percent voted for Nick Harrison and the last 5 percent voted for Jess Eddy and Jay Kumar, does that not equal 100 percent? So out of 5,282 ballots, Ally and Zac had the highest number, 48 percent, making it the majority of the vote. Or is that not right? Maybe the instant-run off system invalidates that because some people didn't realize they could rank candidates after petting a dog in a T-shirt?
And if I'm not right, I assure you that the majority of the student population does not care about these irregularities or even the president they elected. They were simply swayed by that cute doggie forced to wear the Ally and Zac shirt.
jesseddy 1 year, 10 months ago
lol
Terminate_Damnation 1 year, 10 months ago
LOL then I stand corrected. Bruenig then is totally right and there should be a runoff.
NormanNow 1 year, 10 months ago
There is a lot more important things Bruenig to focus on, like 20% cuts in the State's budget. Oh yeah Boren doesn't want you to know it but our state faces a shortfall over over a billion dollars. Get ready to be forced to subside out of state students through disproportionate fee hikes so that the Texas can still come to the University of OKLAHOMA, where our parents have been paying taxes for years.
Bruenig if you actually cared you would realize that UOSA is a joke, its time to spend time at the state capitol and get things done!
ougrad10 1 year, 10 months ago
Actually the majority as stated by the UOSA constitution is 50% + 1. The election board falsely stated a win for Ally and Zac when really there should have been a run off the next week according to the constitution. Also, if you read the end of the article it's obvious to see the corruption of the election board and some blatant breaking of the rules by the candidates who won.
If you are interested to see how justice in this turns out there is a hearing tonight in the law school at 6:30
impatient_with_ignorance 1 year, 10 months ago
"is 48 percent not a majority?"
yikes
actually, the interesting question is why nobody -- not the election committee, not the DAILY, not Student Affairs -- made any effort to explain the voting system to voters before the election.
other questions might be: why was the DAILY's coverage of the candidates and their positions so skimpy and published just a day or two before the election (this was VERY different from DAILY coverage in previous contested elections)
OR why did the DAILY not cover the story that the UOSA President blocked a proposed candidate debate that Gaylord College was going to re-run multiple times?
I think Breunig states his position with great clarity and persuasiveness.
To fall back on the argument that a large majority of students don't care that the election committee violated the Constitution (or failed to understand it) and certified a victory for the candidates that the committee personally favored is not just a weak position -- rather than challenge Breunig's argument, it completely illustrates and confirms it.
0Kelvin 1 year, 10 months ago
Impatient,
The Daily did not cover the story about the UOSA President blocking a proposed candidate debate in Gaylord because it directly INVOLVED the Daily editor and petty differences that couldn't be resolved.
I invite someone from the Daily to flex their investigative journalism muscles and seek out that story.
Robi1988 1 year, 10 months ago
It is a shame such unethical happenings occurred by the officials. Does the election board and the UOSA President really need to try shape the outcome of the election? If the board and the president really think the ticket that they were blatantly supporting truly deserved to be leading the student government, then that ticket should win on their own merits, experience, and issues without their biased influence.
A run-off election should happen to clear up all election irregularities which obviously exist, follow what the UOSA constitution mandates, and give indisputable proof that the Glavas/McCullock ticket or Zenteno/Lloyd ticket should be next year's student government leaders.
andre86w 1 year, 10 months ago
UOSA is such a joke. Kudos to Mr. Bruenig for stepping up and taking a stand.
zdl 1 year, 10 months ago
I don't understand how the Daily has not all over this obvious fraud besides one story the other week about Jess Eddy's charges. Obviously, from reading this column, the UOSA Supreme Court has been busy at work. Yet I haven't seen a single article informing myself and the rest of the student body of the proceedings. At any rate, these elections welcome fraud when there is no accountability and the Daily is quickly losing respect by not fully investigating these leads.
If more people participated in elections and actually cared about student government, UOSA wouldn't be such a joke and might actually accomplish something. Instead of writing your advocates to the administration off, you should attempt to support them. It only turns into resume building if the majority of students don't care. And from the election participation, that seems to be 75% of students.
kipt 1 year, 10 months ago
I'm a part of UOSA and I must say that if the students have problems and you will talk to us or email us or show up to a meeting we WANT to help you. I'm never going to work for the government or run for office, I ran so that I could help students, but if I don't know the problems or your ideas I can't do my job.
So if you have a problem tell us. I don't want UOSA to be lame and powerless but we can't help if you don't let us know what you want changed about the university.
Flysooner 1 year, 10 months ago
Who really cares? It's a bunch of college kids pretending to be politicians.
TheTroll 1 year, 10 months ago
Hilarious! The Daily's lazy, "let's not be unfair and choose" policy not only made them unbiased, but also worthless. But that's nothing new.
Who at this paper thought not covering something would be a good idea?
SoonerDutch 1 year, 10 months ago
Does proclaiming election fraud have anything to do with the fact that your amendments lost by roughly 40%?
pluralist 1 year, 10 months ago
SoonerDutch,
Uh, it may have escaped your limited intellectual capacity but the election fraud pertains to the presidential race, not the ballot initiatives.
ougrad10 1 year, 9 months ago
There's going to be a runoff! So get prepared to cover it!
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