The Student Government Trial Court on Tuesday overturned last week’s Election Board decision to disqualify two potential candidates for SG president and vice president.
After a long hearing and a late-night decision, Trial Court Justice Robert Richey ruled to allow Jay Buller and Robert Lay to run for the two executive positions.
The decision comes exactly a week after the Election Board disqualified Buller and Lay for sending an e-mail to 23 heads of Greek organizations announcing their candidacy and soliciting support.
Allen Richey, SG executive assistant, and Kyle Wilkinson, SG special projects director, filed the complaint against Buller and Lay.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Buller argued the board’s decision was incorrect because it interpreted the election code’s description of “active campaigning” to include e-mail. According to the code, active campaigning is illegal until Friday.
In last week’s decision, the board ruled that e-mail was active campaigning because it was an announcement of candidacy in print, broadcast or any other media.
During the trial, both sides pointed out several flaws in the election code. Both Buller and Elections Commissioner Zach Howser, arguing on behalf of the Election Board, said the code was in need of revision.
Buller said specifically SG legislators need to strike the phrase “other media” from the code and more clearly define active campaigning.
Howser defended the board’s decision at the hearing by saying board members based their decision on exactly what the election code states.
However, Howser also added that the code was too vague and needs to be revised to allow the board to better interpret it.
“I hope this prompts the Senate and the University Court to take some kind of formal stance on rewriting the code, because it needs to be rewritten before something like this happens again,” Howser said.
Howser said the board did not want to disqualify any candidates, but it felt the e-mail gave the potential candidates an unfair advantage. The board saw disqualification as the only appropriate punishment allotted by the code.
“We’re thrilled that the trial court has made what we feel is the right decision,” Buller said. “We are excited about the prospect of having nothing hanging over our heads for the rest of this campaign. We are very excited students are going to get to pick from all the qualified candidates who they want to be their next president and vice president.”
Both Howser and Buller said they have no intentions of appealing the Trial Court decision to SG’s higher court, the University Court.