At a UOSA Superior Court hearing, an argument was heard that the presidential elections should be invalidated or a run-off election should be held.
Josh Edwards and Amber Siddiqui, associate general counsels, represented presidential candidates Jess Eddy and Franz Zenteno in the case to argue that the election was invalid.
Mike Davis, general counselor, and Jennifer Warren, associate general counsel, represented Ally Glavas and Zac McCullock, president-elect and vice president-elect.
The election used the Meeks voting system in which voters rank the candidates. The system eliminates the candidate who receives the least number of votes and then adds the voters’ second choice to the remaining candidates’ totals. Iterations of this system were used until only two candidates remained and Glavas received a majority vote.
In the final iteration of the electronic run-off system, after a voter’s second or third choices were added to the remaining candidates’ totals, Glavas received 2,544 votes and Franz Zenteno received 2,281 votes.
A total of 5,282 students voted in the election, and only 4,825 ballots were used to tabulate the final election results.
Not all candidates were ranked in 457 ballots and so those votes were not counted in later iterations of the electronic run off.
Edwards argued because of this, Glavas did not receive a majority of the ballots.
The UOSA constitution requires that “the student president and vice president shall be popularly elected together by majority vote of the ballots cast in an election for that purpose.”
Warren said those voters did not cast ballots because each iteraton of an electronic run-off system was actually separate elections.
Davis said voters who did not rank candidates chose not to vote, and UOSA cannot force anyone to vote in the election.
“The 457 were not counted because there were effectively no ballots cast in the election,” Davis said.
Edwards argued that voters were not properly informed about how the rankings would be used, and were not informed that they would be taking part in multiple elections with their ranking.
The defense, however, said the Web site told voters they could rank the candidates, and it was partly the responsibility of the candidates that voters understood the electronic run-off process.
Davis said an electronic run-off has been used since 2005, but this is the first time that there has been a question about a candidate receiving a majority vote.
At a meeting March 5, the candidates agreed to use a ranking system instead of a run-off election, said Jeff Riles, election chairman.
The petitioners also argued that the Glavas campaign violated election rules during campaigning.
Davis said he was happy with the court proceedings.
“We have a Superior Court for a reason and we’ll respect whatever ruling they come down with,” Davis said.
Edwards declined to comment on how he thought the case went.
Riles said the court would probably issue a ruling today.
The Oklahoma Daily is pleased to provide you the opportunity to share your thoughts about this article. We encourage lively debate on the issues of the day, but we ask you refrain from using profanity or other offensive speech, engaging in personal attacks or name-calling, posting advertising, or straying from the topic at hand. To comment, you must be a registered user of OUDaily.com. Thanks for taking the time to offer your thoughts.
You must be logged in to leave a comment. Log in | Register
andre86w 2 years, 1 month ago
I did not know that we could rank them. And the election board claims that it didn't want to confuse or waste time informing people. Isn't that their job?
PapaSmurf 2 years, 1 month ago
@andre86w "the election board claims that it didn't want to confuse or waste time informing people. Isn't that their job?"
Confusing people and wasting time? Yes that's exactly their job.
djc0922 2 years, 1 month ago
WOW! I voted, and I didn't rank all of the candidates because I found 2 of them to be very weak and unsatisfactory to lead UOSA. If there was an instruction to rank them all in the ballot for the purpose of a "run-off", it was definitely missing or not stressed out at all.
Is this article really telling me that my vote went to hell because of that????
Firefly21 2 years, 1 month ago
I had no idea what the ranking was for! Had I known I would have ranked!
boomerm9 2 years, 1 month ago
My roommates and I did not fully understand the run off system. We didn't know what the ranking system meant. Could've just been a poll to see the second choice, or saved uosa from having another election if someone backed down. For real people!!! You can't assume we know these things! We're not all involved in UOSA thank you. We can't just pull the knowledge out of the sky!
djc0922 2 years, 1 month ago
That's not really fair Normannow, as much as I do get your point. As crappy as it is that neither team's voters knew of the dumb policy, or the waste of dough, 457 left out ballots makes a huge difference in the election results since there is only a 263 difference, which the left out ballots out-number.
NormanNow 2 years, 1 month ago
This case is garbage, their is no legal standing as Ally voters did not know more about ranking, than Franz voters, so at the end of the day, Franz has no legal standing for this case. But seeing how this is UOSA and they like to waste money whats another $1000 for a new election, that could be used on student organization funding. If Franz really cared about students he would save us our money and actually accept defeat.
boomersooner10 2 years, 1 month ago
The legal standing of the case isn't about Ally voters knowing something that Franz voters didn't. It's about making sure the true will of the students is actually demonstrated through who is elected. And by 457 ballots not being counted, there's no way to tell who would have actually won.