Eight candidates miss deadline for filing expense forms

Elections commissioner Marcos Hernandez said last week it was unlikely any of the candidates would be removed from the election.

"This is a pretty grave error. I can disqualify them, but chances are I won't do that," Hernandez said. "We don't have an extremely huge race so I don't want to be premature. I want to see what the individual circumstances are."

Senate candidates Jonathan Fine, Travis Klein, Marisa Hall, Brett Suma, Emily Dunn, Ferdie Echiverri, Benjamin Graff and Jeff Fields did not have expense reports at the deadline Thursday.

The Associated Students Elections Code states that failure to submit an expense form by the deadline "will result in disqualification from the election, loss of all rights as a candidate and/or a fine not to exceed $25."

The code continues, "If elected, the officer will be subject to the impeachment powers of the ASUA Senate."

Neither the Senate nor the elections commissioner needs to exercise his power to invoke the maximum penalty, Hernandez said.

"I'll probably just levy a $25 fine because that's more acceptable," he said. "I realize they're students and they get caught up in things, but I still have to levy some kind of fine."

At 7 p.m. Thursday, Graff said he was occupied all day registering voters.

"We had a large campaign for voter registration and I was all over campus," he said. "It was a conflict of time and I'll give it to him (Hernandez) first thing tomorrow morning."

Klein said he did not realize he had to turn in an expense form until he received an e-mail from Hernandez informing him of a $25 fee levied against him for violating the code.

"I was under the assumption that you had to turn it in after you're eliminated," he said.

Suma said he tried to drop off his form Thursday morning before he left for Phoenix, but did not want to leave it when Hernandez was not in the ASUA office.

Fine said he turned his expense form in Friday morning after forgetting the deadline. His fine was reduced to $5 because he had not received e-mail reminders on a candidate listserv after his address had been mislisted.

Hernandez said he emphasized the importance of submitting the forms on time to all the candidates.

"I stressed it, and they've had plenty of time," he said.

Dunn, Echiverri, Fields and Hall could not be reached yesterday, nor could elections officials be reached to determine who had turned their expense forms in over the weekend.

Most of the candidates' campaign expenditures were for bookmarks and fliers, Robert Sandoval, assistant elections commissioner, said Thursday.

"They can campaign more for their money and they can hit more people," he said.