For the second time in a month, the results of February’s GUSA presidential election have been overturned, and, for the second time, the Constitutional Council will hear an appeal concerning contested election.

Private discussions have also begun between contesting candidates Kelley Hampton (SFS ’05), Adam Giblin (SFS ’06), Luis Torres (COL ’05), and Eric Lashner (COL ’05) to resolve the two-month election dispute.

Last week the GUSA Election Commission ruled in favor of an appeal filed by Giblin, Lashner, as well as the ticket of Josh Green (SFS ’06) and Lauren Butts (SFS ’06) arguing that fines levied against the Hampton-Torres campaign were not sufficiently severe.

The commission ruled on two motions filed in the appeal. One motion argued for the disqualification of the Hampton-Torres ticket due to “irreparable harm” to the election process. Another appeal imposed stricter fines for the “misuse of university property.”

“In our first appeal the chair issued a non-binding statement saying that we could not be fined for an action that might have been approved by the Election Commission,” Torres said. “This is the same issue that will be brought before them again, except this time they will decide whether it is appropriate to disqualify a ticket based on an action that might have been approved by the same Election Commission which attempted to fine us for it.”

The Constitutional Council received the appeal on Monday, but has yet to set a date for further deliberations.

The GUSA Assembly rejected the Election Commission’s disqualification of Hampton-Torres at Tuesday evening’s assembly meeting after intense debate, voting 1-7-1.

Representative Annie O’Brien (NHS ’06), who worked on Giblin-Lashner’s core campaign, voted for disqualification and Representative Pravin Rajan (SFS ’07) abstained. Rajan worked for Hampton-Torres’ core campaign.

The majority included Representatives Vikram Agrawal (SFS ’07), Ed Duffy (SFS ’07), Octavio Gonzales (COL ’06), Drew Rau (COL ’06), Charlene Rosencrance (SFS `04), Jack Ternan (COL ’04), and Torres himself. Ternan and Duffy were on the Hampton-Torres core campaign and Agrawal was Hampton and Torres’ campaign manager.

The Election Commission’s alternate decision increased fines against the Hampton-Torres ticket worth $11 and is grounds for disqualification by again raising Hampton-Torres’ campaign expenditures above the allowed limit.

The Constitutional Council ruled in favor of an appeal from Hampton and Torres last month.

More people voted for Hampton-Torres in the Feb. 9 election but the ticket was disqualified after exceeding the allowed fine limit.

Discussions moderated by GUSA adviser Erika Cohen Derr have been ongoing informally since the election, but became more formal this week.

“Kelley, Eric, Adam and I needed to be reminded that we are not emotionless, spiritless beings,” Torres said. “We need to work together regardless of what happens and regardless of whether or not these discussions were political or not, we needed to sit down and talk to each other as friends and not tickets. People were getting hurt and none of us came into this wanting people to be hurt.”

Increasingly, debate between the two tickets and their partisans had grown virulent, spilling over into GUSA Assembly meetings.

“We all did Leadership and Beyond. We all pledged to be servant leaders to our community. We all committed ourselves to acting out the Ethos statement, but somehow we allowed ourselves to get caught up in poison and we want to move past that,” Torres said.

He described the discussions as a “candid conversation,” that was “awkward at first, difficult as well, but we said things that needed to be said.”

As of late Thursday evening, no explicit agreement had been reached and Torres said that they would wait until after the Constitutional Council’s pending ruling to finalize anything.

“Adam and I will continue to work to serve the students of Georgetown and it is really quite sad that this process has to continue,” Lashner said.

Outgoing president Brian Morgenstern (COL ’05) and several assembly members expressed concern that the drawn-out appeals process is beginning to interfere with other functions of the student association and other student organizations.

Nominees for Student Activities Commission chair and Lecture Fund chair were selected by Giblin and Lashner and required confirmation by the assembly. Hampton and Torres opposed the confirmations because they objected to being excluded from the decision process. GUSA Secretary Marisa Armanino (COL ’06), who worked for the Giblin-Lashner campaign and holds the nominee applications during deliberations, said that the applications were available for Hampton and Torres to view, but she said that they never took advantage of that opportunity.