Senators Amrita Julka and Dhilena Wickramasinghe elected ASUCD President and Internal Vice President; competing executive ticket, other candidates disqualified after Elections Committee and Judicial Council decisions
By VINCE BASADA — campus@aggie.org
This article was posted on April 29 at 10:51 p.m. PDT.
Amrita Julka and Dhilena Wickramasinghe of the Bitches slate have been elected as ASUCD President and Internal Vice President, respectively, the ASUCD Elections Committee announced on April 29. The pair currently serve as ASUCD Senators.
“[Wickramasinghe and I] pledge to deliver on our promises of making UC Davis and ASUCD safer, more equitable, and transparent,” Julka said in a written statement to The California Aggie. “As your newly elected, we further promise to do as we have championed: unapologetically advocating for what’s right. Even when it’s hard. We are so thankful for everyone’s support, and we cannot wait to serve our community.”
Other newly elected officials include Zack Dollins (Independent) for the role of external affairs vice president (EAVP), Inbar Schwartz (Independent) as student advocate, Robi Castaneda (Bitches slate) as international student representative, and Imani Nur (Independent, formerly Unite for Action slate) as transfer student representative.
The six elected as ASUCD Senators are: Luis Leonardo Garcia (Empoderar slate), Siena Dill-Cruz (Bitches), Jaliah Payne (Bitches), Harshpartap Dhillon (Independent, formerly Unite), Pattarin Khajornchaikul (Independent, formerly Unite) and Phoenix List (Risers slate).
This election saw the disqualifications of several candidates, including the presidential ticket of Aaminah Mohammad and Nanki Kaur. The pair were disqualified on Wednesday, April 27 for “allowing candidates not on their slate to promote their candidacy,” “promoting another candidate’s candidacy on ASUCD [executive] Instagram account,” “promoting candidacy on the Senator instagram account” and for “late night door knocking campaigns,” according to internal elections records shared with The California Aggie.
As of reporting, the Elections Committee has made no statement to the public announcing the disqualification of mentioned candidates. All candidates remained on the ballot during the election cycle.
“There’s a common issue where we’ve been asking questions and we haven’t been receiving answers,” Mohammad said on Friday, April 29. She disputes many of the alleged violations, attributing several to miscommunications.
Both Mohammad and Kaur appealed the decision, though the Judicial Council ruled 4-0 Sunday, April 29 that the ticket had committed enough violations to be disqualified.
Mohammad, speaking with The Aggie late Tuesday, said there was palpable “unfairness and inefficiencies in the ASUCD elections,” and called on reforms to the elections process.
In their ruling, the Judicial Council also recommended reforms and expressed discontent with the current election appeals process.
“We sincerely wish that more time could be spent in regards to the appeals process,” the council’s majority opinion reads. “At present, we are tied to a timeline that we feel should be longer. In addition, the Judicial Council is a resource, many of the violation points in this election cycle could have been avoided with proper communication.”
Senate candidates Tianneh Garcia Bonardi (Empoderar), Aria Jalan (Independent), Aubri Lee (Risers) and EAVP candidate Janani Sundaram (Bitches) were also eliminated for failing to submit a required expenditure report by the required deadline of April 25. The news was announced to candidates early Monday, April 28.
Bonardi, who spoke to The Aggie late Tuesday, maintains that there was a lack of communication surrounding the form from elections officials. She also added that she had no expenses to report, not having spent any money on her campaign.
“I’m just very disappointed [for] all those people who voted specifically for Luis and I,” Bonardi said. “I’m just so disappointed that all those votes don’t matter.”
Bonardi, Jalan and Sundaram are planning a joint appeal to the ASUCD Judicial Council to overturn the decision, according to Bonardi. Lee has chosen not to appeal, though she supports the others in doing so.
The margins for victory and the total vote counts for each candidate have not been released as of time of publication; ASUCD elections use a ranked-choice system. Because of this, the outcome if the appeal were to succeed, or if the vote would be changed substantially enough to result in new elects in the Senate/EAVP race, remains unclear.
The Unite for Action slate, of which Mohammad and Kaur were members, was also dissolved as result of the alleged actions of slate manager and ASUCD President Gaius Ilupeju. The slate’s candidates remained on the ballot, though their profiles were changed from identifying them as members of the Unite slate to Independent.
The alleged violations include “sharing Senate candidates on ASUCD [executive] account” and “promoting slate to all University Honors Program (UHP) students.”
Ilupeju maintains that he did not intend for his campaigning email to be sent to the UHP listserv, rather a member of faculty mistakenly forwarded a separate communication sent to a student identity group.
“The United For Action Slate was dissolved by the Elections Committee for asking UHP faculty to share a flyer on our behalf, however we never requested them to do so,” Ilupeju said.
ASUCD bylaws require that any candidate, ticket, slate manager or slate that accrues three violation points during the course of a campaign shall be disqualified or dissolved by the Elections Committee.
In other results, Constitutional Amendment (CA) #94, making the process of appointing interim officials more democratic and decentralizing appointment power away from the ASUCD executive, passed with a 87.6% majority; 1,979 for, 280 against and 1,908 abstaining.
CA #95, implementing stricter repercussions if the student body’s elected officials are unable to meet training and volunteer requirements, passed with an 84.4% majority; 2,209 for, 407 against and 1,551 abstaining.
The Transportation Equity Fee, a fee referendum to collect five dollars from students per quarter to support Transportation Services, failed with a 67.70% majority. Additionally, the 20% undergraduate turnout required for it to be implemented was not met.
The vote margins for the constitutional amendment and fee referendum were provided in an Elections Committee memo provided to The Aggie.
The election results, which are normally supposed to be released within 48 hours of the end of balloting, were delayed after the bylaws were suspended by the ASUCD Elections Committee, according to emails from the ASUCD Elections Officer to candidates provided to The Aggie. The reason for this suspension was due to technical difficulties, according to a communication from ASUCD Elections to candidates.
The ASUCD Elections Officer did not provide comment on the results or disqualifications of this quarter’s election in time for publication.
This is a developing story, follow The Aggie for continued updates.
Aaliyah Español-Rivas contributed reporting to this piece.
Written by: Vince Basada — campus@theaggie.org
