Charles Nailen/The Hoya Mike Glick (COL ’05) congratulates Adam Giblin (SFS ’06) last night after learning that he and Eric Lashner (COL ’05) had won the election with 32.3 percent of the vote.
RELATED LINK Hampton Disqualified; Giblin Wins Feb. 10, 2004
For the second consecutive year, election night has offered more questions than answers.
In Monday’s election, Kelley Hampton (SFS ’05) and Luis Torres (COL ’05) received more votes than any candidates but campaign violations led to their disqualification. As a result, Adam Giblin (SFS ’06) and Eric Lashner (COL ’05) have been elected GUSA president and vice president.
Last year the GUSA election ended in controversy as well, with both losing tickets, Rob Hutton (SFS ’04) and Nazareth Haysbert (SFS ’05), and Steve Palmese (MSB ’04) and Tim Nunziata (MSB ’04), disqualified after sending e-mails that violated campaign rules.
But the results of this year’s election could have more lasting damage.
Hampton and Torres promise to challenge the results, as did Hutton-Haysbert and Palmese-Nunziata last year.
For better or worse, the incoming president and vice president will either be known as the candidates who did not win a plurality of the “popular vote,” or if Hampton and Torres successfully challenge the results, the candidates who were originally disqualified.
“Unfortunately, now we’re going to have questions of legitimacy,” GUSA President Brian Morgenstern (COL ’05) said.
But Morgenstern defended the decision of the election commission to report Hampton and Torres as the ticket that received the most votes.
“Clarity is always the best plan,” he said. “It was a classy and ballsy move.”
The election commission would not comment on any specific fines assessed to candidates, but fines had been levied against all candidates for a variety of violations.
But second-place candidates Josh Green (SFS ’06) and Lauren Butts (SFS ’06) said that although all candidates had received their share of fines, the election remained clean.
“We felt that the election commission ran a fair campaign,” Green said.
Now the Constitutional Council and the GUSA Assembly – which also remains politically charged, with 10 assembly members endorsing or working for Hampton-Torres – will wrestle with the issues governing contested elections, many of which were taken up last year.
“We’ve got to clean it up,” Giblin said of the election bylaws.
But until then, Morgenstern will continue as president, even if the post-election cleanup lasts beyond next Tuesday’s scheduled swearing-in of the elected officials.
“I’m the president until I swear in the next one,” he said.
