UPDATE 9/30/10- KnightNews.com asked the President of UCF, Dr. Hitt, what he thought of the SGA Senate Elections. See what he said below:
Photo evidence of a secret meeting.
A failure to properly advertise how to run for office.
And now, a confirmed report of a voting irregularity has been filed with the Supervisor of Elections.
These are just some of the controversies marring UCF’s Fall Student Government Association Senate elections already facing criticism from students for having only seven seats contested by two or more candidates out of the 56 total seats on Senate. And KnightNews.com has learned from sources inside SGA that more controversies could be surfacing soon.
On Tuesday, SGA Supervisor of Elections Shane Meckler confirmed for the first time he received a report of some sort of voting problem from at least one student.
“I did receive one email from a sole Graduate Student stating that she wasn’t able to vote for Senate Candidates,” Meckler said in an e-mailed statement to KnightNews.com. “I did not receive any similar complaints and we’re still looking into why this particular student had an issue voting for Candidates.”
KnightNews.com also received similar reports from Graduate students stating they couldn’t write candidates in, as well as reports from a candidate who said his name disappeared from the ballot. Meckler insisted everything is working properly at this time.
“We have again, double-checked and everything is working properly,” he said.
The confirmed official report of a voting problem comes the same day as UCF released documents showing Meckler didn’t advertise in campus media as early as SGA statutes dictate.
SGA Election statutes require the Election Commission to advertise in all campus media “on (1) week before petitions become available for the Fall semester.”
Petitions became available for this this election on Tuesday, Sept. 7, according to the SGA Elections website. According to election statutes, the SGA Election Commission should have started advertising in all campus media one week before that date — on August 31.
SGA hasn’t advertised elections at all with KnightNews.com, and we’ve uncovered SGA only placed one advertisement regarding elections in the Central Florida Future newspaper for elections sometime after Sept. 2 — after the deadline SGA was required to advertise how to run.
Candidates who were not on the ticket organized by SGA Speaker Drew Pope during a meeting at Brooklyn Pizza on Sept. 6, have told KnightNews.com the lack of advertising caused them to miss or nearly miss the deadline to get on the ballot.
See what students said when we asked if they knew about elections: httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtLXxSd05LY
It appears several were in that boat, because at least a dozen came forward requesting paperwork to run as a write-in candidate after the deadline to get on the ballot passed, according to Election Commissioner Hannah Fraher’s statement to Senate on Thursday. It’s not clear how many others may have signed up to be a write-in since that time.
KnightNews.com did some checking, and found out this entire election could be thrown out by the SGA Judicial Council, should that body decide to do so.
According to UCF Election Statute 604.5, “A New Election will occur if the race is ‘invalidated’ by the Judicial Council.” If the Judicial Council decided to invalidate this race, all of the write-in candidates would have their names placed on the new election ballot, according to 604.5B.
Although KnightNews.com found no record of this happening at UCF, it’s possible that someone could try and seek legal intervention from a Circuit Court to take corrective action for anything the court deems needs such action. Such legal action has been attempted several times at the University of Florida in Gainesville, students and alumni there told KnightNews.com.
KnightNews.com will continue to follow this controversial Senate election and post updates as we get them.
