The Georgetown University Student Association (GUSA) Senate rejected the results of the 2023 executive election, voting 11 to six, failing to certify the results of the election. 

The vote at the senate’s Oct. 8 meeting came despite the GUSA Election Commission, which oversees GUSA elections, recommending that senators certify the results. The vote not to certify comes amid allegations that the Jaden Cobb (CAS ’25)-Sanaa Mehta (SFS ’25) campaign had broken the GUSA election bylaws by improperly campaigning on election day and reportedly engaging in bullying and harassment of other campaigns. 

Full disclosure: Sanaa Mehta previously served as a columnist for The Hoya’s Opinion section in spring 2023. 

Cobb and Mehta told The Hoya that they disagreed with the characterization that they broke election bylaws and said they did not engage in bullying or harassment of any of their opponents. 

Cobb and Mehta had secured the most votes in the election with 827 votes to 389 for Saatvik Sunkavalli (SFS ’25) and Andrea Li (SFS ’26) and 293 for Axel Abrica (CAS ’25) and Sebastian Cardena (CAS ’26).  

Mehta said that the Cobb-Mehta campaign is disappointed the senate voted not to certify the results. 

“We’re very disheartened. This was 827 people coming in and voting for us because they believed in our platform, and they believed in us,” Mehta said in an interview with The Hoya. 

“Everyone at Georgetown, in our opinion, has an equal say, equal voice. They’re all students. We’re all equal students. We’re all equal undergraduates at Georgetown. Nobody should take away 827 votes,” Mehta added. 

According to the GUSA bylaws, certifying an executive election requires two-thirds of the full senate including absences and abstentions — 15 votes — to vote in favor of a motion to certify. With six senators voting against certification, two senators absent and Sunkavalli and Senators John DiPierri (SFS ’25) and George Currie (CAS ’26), the chair and vice chair of the Ethics and Oversight Committee, abstaining from the vote, the senate was unable to certify the election.

Although a second vote to officially decertify the election failed six to 11, the absence of certification means that GUSA must hold a new executive election. GUSA plans to hold the new election from Oct. 19 at 8 p.m. to Oct. 20 at 8 p.m., with the senate voting Oct. 22 on certification, according to outgoing GUSA President Camber Vincent (SFS ’24).

The Election Commission found that the Cobb-Mehta ticket violated GUSA bylaw 16.04, which says candidates and their campaign teams cannot set up voting stations with electronic devices on election day.  

Photos and a video presented by the Election Commission at the meeting showed Cobb and other students campaigning at tables with flyers and multiple electronics on election day for four hours, despite being previously warned by the Election Commission not to do so. The Cobb-Mehta campaign was found to have tabled illegally Oct. 6 between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.

According to the Election Commission and Vincent, students cast 101 votes for the Cobb-Mehta ticket while they were tabling for those four hours, while the Sunkavalli-Li ticket received 33 votes and the Abrica-Cardena ticket received 28 votes. 

Cobb said students were using electronics to study and not for election purposes and that their tabling was legal under the bylaws. 

“We thought, okay, we have already been doing meet and greets. We’ve been tabling, meeting people. That’s normal campaign things that we’ve been doing,” Cobb said in an interview with The Hoya. 

At the senate meeting, the Election Commission said they could not determine whether the Cobb-Mehta campaign’s technology at the table was a voting station encouraging students to vote for their campaign. After informing the campaign multiple times to put the technology away, the Election Commission suspended the Cobb-Mehta ticket from campaigning for the remainder of the election period, an approximately 24-hour period. 

During the meeting, senators debated if the commission took the proper course of action in suspending the Cobb-Mehta campaign, debating whether the bylaw violation would have warranted the ticket from being disqualified. According to GUSA’s bylaws, the commission has the discretion to sanction campaigns found in violation of the governing bylaws. 

At the meeting, Abrica and Sunkavalli said the Election Commision was not transparent in the actions they took to sanction the Cobb-Mehta campaign. 

“What’s up to debate is the fact that the Election Commission needs to be transparent. And when there’s consistent miscommunication between one of the tickets and the Election Commission, you can’t quantify the amount of votes that another ticket could have gotten in those four hours,” Abrica said at the senate meeting.

The commission said it could also not verify allegations that a member of the Cobb-Mehta campaign posted an endorsement on the GUSA Equality and Inclusion team’s Instagram page. There is no bylaw that pertains to official GUSA accounts campaigning for certain tickets.

At the meeting, senators also discussed allegations that the Cobb-Mehta ticket had bullied and harassed the Abrica-Cardena campaign. The commission said they referred all allegations of bullying and harassment to the Office of Student Conduct.

In an interview with The Hoya, Abrica said he had reported to the commission that individuals had approached his campaign to report hearing Cobb speaking on the phone with his supporters calling the Abrica-Cardena campaign “stupid” and stating that they could never win the election. In emails obtained by The Hoya, the commission responded recommending that these concerns be taken to the Office of Student Conduct and that if individuals felt unsafe, they should contact the Georgetown University Police Department. 

Cobb denied that these phone calls took place, that he called the Abrica-Cardena ticket “stupid” and that he bullied and harassed them. 

“I found that very disheartening that people would spread those ideas,” Cobb said. 

“We ran a very, very, very clean campaign in the sense of that any dirt that we got from anybody or anything, somebody came and told us about certain candidates or anything else like that, we did not use that whatsoever,” Cobb added. 

Vincent, who came at the defense of the commision multiple times throughout the senate meeting, said he was disappointed by the senate’s decision not to certify. 

“It is ultimately at their discretion to certify or not certify the proceedings, but from what was presented in the meeting it was my understanding that the EC had acted according to the By-Laws,” Vincent wrote to The Hoya. 

The GUSA Senate also voted to unanimously confirm the results of the Senate election, which saw Emily Bertanzetti (CAS ’25), Daniel Hermonstine (SFS ’26), Fahad Shahbaz (SOH ’26) and incumbent Sahar Wakilzada (SFS ’26) elected to four at-large seats, and Lex Njomin (SFS ’27), Nico Santiago (CAS ’27), Rai Muhammad Hasen Masoud (CAS ’27), Keatyn Wede (CAS ’27), Han Li (CAS ’27), Julia Revill (SFS ’27) and Sahil Sud (SFS ’27) elected to seven first-year seats.

Cobb and Mehta would not say if they plan to run again in the second round of the executive elections. 

“This is very brand new, fresh on our minds,” Cobb said. “We are going to take some time to really kind of get away from this situation and kind of see what’s best for you know, Jaden and Sanaa.”