The Student Government judicial branch issued the Innovate ticket four penalties for two violations of the Student Government election code. If a ticket receives six penalties, they’re disqualified.
Innovate candidates political science and screen arts junior Anna Cate Strong and political science junior Gigi Powers will still be sworn in as student-body president and vice president.
The hearing was presided over by two law students, chief justice Josh Campesi and chief justice Julien LeBlanc. Seven judicial complaints were filed with the court. One was dropped before being heard, which was Innovate v. Challenge.
Due to the large caseload, the justices each presided over half of the hearings.
Innovate was represented by international trade and finance junior Cooper Ferguson, political science junior Drew Prude and law student Nicholas Ashton. Inspire was represented by biological and agricultural engineering senior Alex Basse and biological sciences senior Zachary LeBlanc.
Inspire alleged Innovate had made use of a power board and a popcorn machine that were not recorded on their finance forms. They also alleged that the price of these exceeded the $4,000 spending cap on campaigns.
“Failure to record this on the DR (donation report) by Innovate would violate, directly, code section 807-3,” LeBlanc said.
Innovate said the popcorn machine was borrowed for the campaign. The campaign members didn’t say they used the power board, but the court ruled that the use of the power board would have been a borrowed good, meaning they wouldn’t have surpassed their spending limit.
“If we follow the continuation of their theory that the power board was used by Innovate, they said it would count as a donated good, but it would actually count as a borrowed good since they provided no evidence and we have affidavits saying we were not charged; we were not fined by LSU landscaping for that usage of the power box,” Ferguson said.
The court ruled that the power board and popcorn machine were both borrowed goods that should have been listed on the campaign’s donation record, penalizing Innovate with two violations. The court ruled that the campaign hadn’t gone over their spending limit since both items were donated.
Inspire filed a petition to the court to further consider whether Innovate had went over their spending limit. The court rejected this petition, stating that the court had not made a mistake in its ruling.
In another case, Innovate alleged that Inspire used an Instagram raffle for a $20 gift card that constitutes bribery, which would violate the code. The court ruled that the code’s statutory requirement that there must be an understanding that the benefit will influence the enrolled student was not met.
Another case filed by Innovate against Inspire was withdrawn by Innovate at the meeting, citing a lack of evidence.
A joint complaint was filed by Inspire and Challenge against Innovate. Innovate left chalk on the ground in the quad saying “Vote Innovate” and “Vote Strong-Powers.” Inspire and Challenge argued this constituted campaigning outside of the daily campaign window since the chalk was left out overnight. The court ruled in favor of Innovate.
In another case, Innovate alleged that Inspire had not accounted for the campaign’s T-shirts in its campaign finance report. Inspire said it had its T-shirts remade since they were messed up, and that this cost was accounted for. The court ruled in Inspire’s favor.
