IUSA refuses party's complaint

Insufficient margins, cumbersome font sizes and single line spacing are a few of the reasons the IU Student Association has refused to admit complaints filed by the Action ticket for review by the elections commission.\nThe Action complaints did not meet three requirements of the IUSA elections code, including the given deadline and complaint format.\nAccording to the code, tickets who wish to contest the election must turn in no more than eight pages for each complaint. Each document must have one-inch margins and be typewritten and double-spaced using a 12-point font. Complaints must contain specific allegations containing the dates when each offense occurred, names of the people involved and citations as to which part of the elections code each incident violated.\nComplaints are due to the IUSA elections commission before 5 p.m. the day following the election.\nThe elections commission ruled that the Action complaints conflicted with each of these requirements. The official unanimous opinion of the commission stated that Action failed to double-space and use one-inch margins or specifically allege Crimson and Unity violations. Also, several IUSA members witnessed Action turn in their complaints at 5:15 p.m. on Thursday, 15 minutes past the deadline.\nIUSA elections coordinator Leah Silverthorn said the substantive requirements contained the complaint's most glaring errors.\n"Action gave us a list of violations and 30 pages of random e-mails," she said. "It didn't flow. A bunch of pictures and e-mails is not evidence to us."\nAction presidential candidate Laura Walda attributed the lateness and technical inaccuracies of the complaints to the unfair IUSA elections system. Because there is no organization, commission or department assigned to keep IUSA campaigns legitimate, the individual tickets are forced to police each other's actions, Walda said.\n"I can see the need to have an organized system to file complaints, but it is difficult for a party to put together a list of complaints during a campaign," she said. "The commission or some other committee needs to take a more active role. It should not be the job of the tickets to police the other tickets."\nAdding a new department or empowering an existing one to take on the responsibility of policing IUSA tickets would require a change in the elections code, Silverthorn said.\n"I would like to, but I don't think (the elections commission) has the authority to change the code right now," Silverthorn said. "It should not be the job of the tickets to police the other tickets. People are asking us to disregard the rules, but I am all for changing the code for next year."\nAction still has the opportunity to appeal the elections commission decision to the IUSA supreme court. If the decision is overturned and the complaints admitted, the court or the elections commission would hear, vote on and write an opinion for each violation.\n"If the supreme court rules to allow Action's (contestations), it could be weeks before we release the results," IUSA vice president Judd Arnold said. "If they do not appeal, the election results could be out as early as Tuesday."\nAction has until 5:30 p.m. today to appeal the elections commission decision.\n"Right now we are unhappy," Walda said. "We felt we played the game very fairly. There is a bit of a split in our party to see whether to appeal it further"