Hawkins and Homies ticket file complaints to reform UCSU voting procedure
For the second year running, the Hawkins and Homies ticket lost the University of Colorado Student Union elections.
Last Friday, the results of this year’s contentious elections were released and Thomas Nelson Rowe and Kyle Alan Hawkins of the Hawkins and Homies platform once again failed to take the UCSU executive positions. They made a substantial increase in votes from last year.
At the end of the campaigning, Hawkins and Rowe made promises to pursue official complaints and appeals to UCSU regarding alleged election violations on the part of their competition as well the iVote system, which they hold in ill regard.
This is reminiscent of last year when, after a resounding loss, the Hawkins and Homies candidates filed official appeals to the 2006 election results on the grounds of reported computer glitches and negative campaigning.
“Our reasons for challenging the election are great,” Hawkins wrote last year in a formal challenge of the elections. “As soon as Hawkins and Homies announced our intentions to run for Tri-executive, the other tickets along with UCSU started campaigning negatively against us. We have relevant evidence of negative campaigning by UCSU, the Class Act ticket and especially the Marvel ticket. Therefore, we have no choice but to challenge the entire 2006 election.”
The elections were not overturned and UCSU remained as it is today.
Hawkins took this into account this year.
“We challenged and appealed last year’s election and were not given the chance to be heard in the Appellate Court because of bias,” he said. “Therefore, we learned from the experience and will let the current standings (of the 2007 elections) be the final vote. Instead, Hawkins and Homies are choosing to begin preparing for next year’s Hawkins and Homies campaign.”
On Monday the campaign funding reports were released for the Hawkins and Homies platform, the victorious Unity platform and select members of the Value platform. These reported that no ticket that reported funding usage used more than approved by UCSU by-laws.
“We originally thought we could (contest the election),” Rowe said. “But after looking at the election code, basically, you can add up campaign funds to one cause such as the Unity and Value tickets.”
While initially Hawkins and Rowe felt they would be able to contest this year’s election on the grounds of overuse of campaign funding on the part of the Unity ticket, the financial reports showed that the Unity ticket spent almost $3,000 less than they were allowed, after combining the potential spending limits of each member of the platform, under recently instated UCSU by-laws.
While they no longer have the necessary firepower to contest the election, the Hawkins and Homies candidates will still be filing an official complaint with UCSU regarding the iVote system, which they hope will help their chances in the next UCSU elections.
The iVote system was brought under question last year as well, not only by Hawkins and Homies, but also by the losing ticket of the year, Marvel.
The Marvel ticket argued that 150 students were denied voting and this irreversibly skewed the election against them.
However the issue was put to rest after UCSU office manager Sylvia Khaton filed an affidavit to the UCSU Appellate Court stating that those students supposedly denied their vote “were afforded every opportunity to vote and chose not to.”
Hawkins and Rowe are once again bringing the iVote system under scrutiny.
“The iVote system was messed up,” Rowe said. “There were a lot of people who couldn’t vote. They had to go down to the UCSU office and vote on a piece of paper. That shouldn’t happen. The iVote system is a tedious process and not user-friendly. We plan to write a letter to the election commissioner and tell them what we think should be changed next year so that hopefully more students will vote and make it a fair election.”
Charles Gilford, one of the newly elected UCSU Tri-executives, feels similarly to Hawkins and Rowe and assures students that the issue will be taken into account during the next term.
“The iVote system is one that in my opinion is efficient but is not perfect,” Gilford said. “The fact that some voters had to create “channels” on their CU Connect page reveals that there are some issues that need to be dealt with. I believe that the iVote system could be altered to be more user friendly. This is a matter that my fellow Tri-Executives and I will discuss in the upcoming year.”
Despite their loss, the Hawkins and Homies ticket remains optimistic and plans to return next year.
“We would like to mention that since the Value ticket did not take the time to turn in their expenditure report they were disqualified and Hawkins and Homies were the runner ups for this election,” Hawkins said. “That means second place Homies!”
Contact Campus Press staff writer Brandon Springer at brandon.springer@thecampuspress.com
