Unite LSU Student Government presidential candidate John Woodard and vice presidential candidate Taylor Parks cheered Wednesday as the announcement came that they received more than 1,000 votes over their opponents, Impact LSU presidential candidate T Graham S. Howell and vice presidential candidate Kaitlin Torké.
Despite the landslide of votes, it is unclear if Woodward and Parks will reign as SG leaders due to being disqualified while default winners Howell and Torké fled the scene moments after the announcement came.
Woodard and Parks were disqualified for overspending their budget and will go to the University Court tonight to appeal the decision. They also have a possible second disqualification for submitting their financial documents late, but they still defeated Howell and Torké on an almost 60 to 40 percent vote of 3,337 to 2,240. The University’s notoriously low SG voter turnout was around 20 percent, or 5,577, and declined from last year’s general election, which saw around 24 percent, or 6,529 votes.
“We want to make sure that we go to UCourt and represent all of our candidates,” Woodard said. “Now we are going to take this head-on and make sure this is straightened out in UCourt.”
Although Howell sent The Daily Reveille a statement via email, he refused to speak in person or comment on his controversial victory by default.
The announcement of the new SG president was delayed for more than an hour while the election board deliberated over the content of Unite LSU’s financial documents that were received 30 minutes past the 10 a.m. deadline Wednesday. A UCourt case is set for 7 p.m. tonight to address the disqualification.
The late filing of Unite LSU’s financial documents, seen in the document attached to this article, isn’t the ticket’s only problem. After looking at Unite LSU’s election documents, the election board found the ticket had overspent its budget, which led to Unite LSU’s immediate disqualification. SG’s Commissioner of Elections Aimeé Simon made the decision to disqualify the Unite LSU ticket.
The Election Board released a statement saying the Unite LSU ticket had spent more than the Election Code allows for and it voted Wednesday afternoon on a 3-yes, 0-no, 1-abstention vote to disqualify Unite LSU. “The Board found that the Unite LSU ticket vastly overspent their campaign limit,” the statement reads.
Woodard said although he was disappointed by the disqualification, he will work to overturn the election board’s decision.
Outgoing SG President Taylor Cox and Vice President Carrie Hebert released a statement Wednesday evening reminding students of their commitment to hearing their voices.
“As the leaders of your [SG], we are committed to ensuring that the results of the spring election are fair, equitable and transparent,” the statement reads.
Unite LSU won the majority of the open seats in terms of votes, but because of the disqualification, Impact LSU won those seats by default.
Once Howell and Torké quickly left the election results announcements, they directed questions to their campaign managers Lindsey Bennett and Andrew David.
“It’s unfortunate what happened to Unite LSU, but we are very proud of all of our candidates and all of the hard work that they put in, and we know they will do a great job in office,” Bennett said.
Bennett said the election code is clear and the Unite LSU ticket violated that code.
“Maybe if we had broken the rules too, we could have done some of the same things with our campaign,” Bennett said. “But we didn’t.”
A similar situation occurred during the University’s 2010 elections when former SG President J Hudson and Vice President Dani Borel’s candidates were disqualified due to an issue with their financial documents. While Hudson and Borel won their UCourt hearings and their candidates were reinstated, they had incorrectly allocated the money in their budget, while Woodard and Parks overspent their budget.
