By Melissa Caceres/News Director
With evidence of voter fraud and failure to comply with the Student Body Elections Code, presidential candidate Sanjeev Udhnani and his running mate Connor Mautner filed two court orders today to the Student Government Supreme Court questioning the legitimacy of the 2012 SGA presidential election.
Laura Farinas, presidential candidate, and Alex Castro, vice presidential candidate, were presented as the winners of the contested election on April 5.
The campaign’s management team claims to have evidence to demonstrate that the Farinas and Castro campaign “violated several regulations as laid forth by the Student Body Elections Code, including issues regarding conflict of interest, non-compliance with the elections code, failure to adhere to a private censure issued by Campus Life, and most importantly, voter fraud.”
“Throughout the campaign, we received copies of text messages from several sources in which they were asked to submit, or submitted, their panther ID’s and passwords so that members of the Farinas 2012 campaign can vote on their behalf,” said Gracie Aguero, the Udhnani-Mautner campaign’s compliance manager, in a press release.
If found guilty by the Elections Commission, the president-elect and vice president-elect would be subject to disqualification from their positions.
“We ran an honest campaign. With every single vote that we got we made sure that that person had information on what was going to be done,” said Farinas in an interview with Student Media earlier today. “If an appeal were to be sent in, I don’t have no idea what grounds it would be on.”
Students have 48 hours from the end of an election to contest student government elections.
“The issue of voter fraud and noncompliance with the Student Body Elections Code brings into question the legitimacy of the newly elected ticket and the integrity of Student Government,” said Udhnani.
More updates as story develops.
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