By
The Wildcat Opinions Board
On March 7, the first day of the two-day student elections, candidate Brandon D'Angelo, through his campaign manager, sent out a mass e-mail to more than 4,200 UA students.
The e-mail detailed the administrative vice-president candidate's campus involvement, his desires for office and references to his stand-up abilities, including an endorsement from this publication.
Within hours, elections commissioner Joe Rogers appropriately found the mass e-mail to be a gross violation of the elections code - candidates were warned that mass e-mails were forbidden - and within his sound discretion ordered D'Angelo to cease campaigning, further sanctioning him to have all his campaign materials removed by 6 p.m.
He made the decision based on a precedent set in 1997 when former presidential candidate Rhonda Wilson exceeded her campaign expense limit.
If D'Angelo had a problem meeting those demands, he was instructed to immediately inform Rogers.
Around 10 p.m. that night, one of D'Angelo's banners was found hanging on the Alpha Epsilon Phi sorority house.
Rogers heard about it, but not from D'Angelo. He found the banner and with the support of ASUA President Ben Graff, appropriately disqualified D'Angelo.
The fact that the ASUA Supreme Court ruled these actions improper is unfortunate.
The commissioner's job is to preserve a fair election, and within elections code, he or she has the broad authority to determine the best remedies necessary to move the elections forward fairly and consistently.
At the time of the incident, Rogers was under an extreme time crunch. He did his research. He based his sanctions directly on actions placed upon Wilson, and did so without negligence.
The court scrutinized the elections code and decided that Rogers went too far. Claiming they were bound by the rules of statutory interpretation, the opinion stated that the commissioner's influence is limited "to investigation and evaluation of election code violations on the days of General Elections."
In other words, he was powerless, stripped of his ability to adjudicate any wrongdoing once the voting began.
The court would have rather seen Rogers not do anything, allow the voters to decide a winner and then, if D'Angelo would have won, allowed his opponent, Tricia Williams, to appeal to the ASUA Senate.
We question the wisdom of this thinking. The new Senate won't be inaugurated until May 1, meaning the soonest a special election could he held would be in the fall when the student body returns. This would completely disrupt the new administration and put them months behind.
D'Angelo may have a fine moral character. He is not accused of any criminal wrongdoing. But it was his actions - the e-mail - that forced Rogers' campaign suspension and his silence (during the trial, D'Angelo said he could not find a ladder to take down the banner, nor felt it was appropriate to call Rogers at home the night in question) that has led the court to point an unfair finger at the commissioner.
If this is what the court is going to uphold and the court is the ultimate arbiter, then these codes need to be redefined. Rogers was just. Case closed.
