The Student Government Association elections board voted Wednesday night that Cardinal Connection committed no additional violations. The slate remains the 2014-15 executive board of SGA.
Additional possible campaign violations were brought to the elections board Wednesday afternoon. The allegations included that Cardinal Connection had its Facebook page public before the nomination convention and tweeted from its Twitter account minutes before the nomination convention closed.
Cardinal Connection — Nick Wilkey, president; Carli Hendershot, vice president; Rahissa Engle, secretary; and Sidney Staples, treasurer — beat Empower by 81 votes Tuesday night.
“I feel very relieved,” Wilkey said late Wednesday night. “I’ll feel even more relieved [Thursday].”
The elections board remains a governing body through Friday afternoon, and elections code says that violations can be filed up to 48 hours after the election results are certified.
Wilkey said he is not positive what the allegations were, but he believes they concerned tweets.
“I had confidence we didn’t actually do anything wrong,” he said. “I still don’t know what we are accused of.”
When Cardinal Connection’s win was announced Tuesday night, the slate also received a fine for $400 — the maximum amount — for a violation regarding using University Computing Services to campaign during the election.
The elections board did not confirm the official violation, but Wilkey sent an email to Ball State University Dance Marathon committee members Monday afternoon, urging them to vote for Cardinal Connection. This was in violation of the elections code.
An additional fine would have pushed the slate above the maximum fine before a slate is disqualified, according to elections code. The code does not specify what would happen if a slate was disqualified after they were elected.
Empower, Cardinal Connection’s only competition, consisted of presidential candidate Jes Wade, vice presidential candidate Gabrielle Bunn, secretarial candidate Bekki Kimani and treasurer candidate Connor Saum.
Wade said she doesn’t know how to feel about the result.
“No, I’m really not sure [if I’m OK with the decision],” Wade said. “I would love to talk to the elections board tomorrow to see why they voted the way they did. I would like to see what the evidence was and go from there.”
Bunn said she thinks the elections board is “sweeping it under the rug.” She questions the motives of Alex Sventeckis, elections board chairman, because of his involvement with Wilkey on the Fusion slate last year.
“I’ve seen three elections; I just cannot comprehend how that is not a violation,” she said. “I think there are going to be a lot of students who can’t comprehend it either, and there are even more students who don’t know its happening because they are trying to hide it. I don’t think that’s fair, and I don’t think that’s right.”
According to the elections code, candidates may appeal any elections board penalty to the judicial court.
Engle said Cardinal Connection plans to appeal its only violation that concerns Wilkey’s email.
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