SGA selects April 29 for second election

A second Student Government Association presidential election will take place April 29, because of four violations of election rules made by a presidential candidate.

According to the ruling both candidates, Iheanyi Maduka and John Wright, will be on the ballot and will be eligible for election. No new candidates will be permitted to place their names on the ballot.

“Throughout both voting days (Thursday and Friday), four violations had been broken by one of the presidential candidates,” and SGA Vice-President Roy Henry. “Senators came to myself, Keith and other members on the executive board with complaints they had heard, so we during our executive meeting on Monday, we decided to hold another election.”

The four violations that were filed were a flyer for one of the candidates that was stuck onto the edge of the voting station and repeated vocal support by supporters of one of the candidates could have swayed votes, especially if some voters had little knowledge of the candidates. The vocal supporters’ actions could be considered malicious because these individuals ignored the warnings of the poll worker that they were within the 100-foot no-campaign zone. Allegations of campaign flyers being removed or destroyed could not be held against one candidate because the distance of the witness to the removal of a flyer was 25 feet away and admitted that the alleged guilty party could be someone else; a verbal exchange about a destroyed flyer occurred over 100 feet from the voting station and did not constitute an election violation.

“I wish we could have had the election this past week,” said SGA President Keith Woodruff. “But I do think the decision was a good one by SGA. One candidate broke rules and having a president based on that would be unfair to the students at Georgia College & State University.”

Advisor of SGA, Eddie Howard thought, the executive meeting was a successful one.

“I was real proud of the students and how they all handled themselves,” said Howard. “They really didn’t a president to be falsely elected.”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Apr 25 2003. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry