This winter’s ASUCD election has certainly been one for the books but thankfully the ASUCD Court has finally provided an end to the saga.
During a pre-hearing last week, the court unanimously shot down Case 46, Christopher Ambriz vs. the ASUCD elections committee, which centered on a voting malfunction in which the website went down for three-and-a-half hours during the elections. Ambriz claimed students were “disenfranchised” because of the malfunction.
The court’s decision was justified – the elections committee did the best they could in the situation and the new senators and executives were rightly sworn into office. Now the elections issue has finally been laid to rest, giving closure to both sides involved in the case. ASUCD senators and executives can go about their duties as elected officials without worrying that they may be removed from office and have to start campaigning again.
But now that the issue is over we have to ask: What took so long? The elected ASUCD officials are now almost two months in to their terms; the dispute went on for far longer than necessary. Issues regarding the winter ASUCD elections should not continue into April.
In the future, disputes like this need to be settled quickly and promptly. It is distressing to think that after the ASUCD Executive office has already hired all their staff and started working on their policies, they could have been removed from office two months into the game.
On another note, while the court generally handled the entire situation well, the outcome of the court’s initial pre-hearing on Apr. 15 was amateur. The malfunctioning of a tape recorder left the court unable to make a decision on the case, dragging out the court case for yet another week.
Such a mistake should be avoided in the future, either by having a back-up recorder or by adequately ensuring the machine is properly functioning.
