About 24 hours after the lone slate at the Student Government Association nomination convention was turned away, presidential hopeful Beth Cahill said the slate was disappointed in the Elections Board's decision.
"All I can say is that to our knowledge all the signatures were genuine," she said.
Elections Chair Marco Pretell-Vazquez said the board had enough concern about the signatures to make the slate regather them, but it didn't have proof of wrongdoing.
The board couldn't verify the signatures because some of them were missing addresses and had "similar" handwriting styles, he said. It couldn't verify the handwriting came from the same person, he said.
"We really just want to move forward to the next nomination convention," Pretell-Vazquez said.
Cahill said the slate, which was responsible for gathering the signatures, hoped the situation wouldn't hurt the slate's image on campus.
"Everybody has their own opinions," Cahill said, "and people rarely see both sides of the story."
She didn't know what side of the story students might miss, she said.
Sophomore economics major Lukas Snyder said he didn't know of anything the Elections Board could do except let the slate regather the signatures. The lack of interested students left the board with no other option, he said.
The second nomination convention is Thursday at 7 p.m., Pretell-Vazquez said, which was the original time scheduled for the presidential and vice presidential debates.
Pretell-Vazquez said students interested in forming a slate have until the second convention to turn in their election packets if they wish to campaign immediately. If a slate misses the convention it has until 5 p.m. Sunday to turn in packets, but it won't be able to begin campaigning until the ballot is released Monday.
The Elections Board met at 11 p.m. Monday, he said, and discovered the Elections Code mandates that if after the nomination convention, if fewer candidates than executive seats step forward, nominations can be made until 5 p.m. the day before the ballots are released.
Graduate student Matt Balk said SGA is facing a "lose-lose situation."
"Student government is pretty screwed anyway if they only have one [slate] going and they might be cheating," he said.
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