The Judicial Board released two decisions Monday on cases that had been brought regarding the Grand Marshal election held several weeks ago. After hearing arguments on the case brought by Kyle Gracey ’06, which contended that the special runoff election had been called unnecessarily because five of the six missing ballots that had prompted it never existed, the J-Board agreed and declared that the last hand recount of the final elections done by the Rules and Elections Committee was accurate. This vote showed Carlos Perea ’07 leading by four votes over Zack Freeman ’07, and Perea was declared the 140th Grand Marshal.
The J-Board cited six reasons in overturning RNE’s decision that Freeman was the GM after the runoff election: the results of the hand recount of the original election were accurate; those results placed Perea four votes ahead of Freeman; there were six missing ballots, five of which had sequential serial numbers; there were known errors in printing the ballots for the election; and several ballots were invalidated for various reasons resulting in their exclusion from vote count and margin of error calculations.
“Right decision, wrong rationale,” Gracey said describing the decision, going on to call it “completely different from the basis for filing the case.” He said that the reasoning behind his case was that the probability of five consecutively numbered ballots all being voted on and lost by RNE was so low that it could be discounted as a printer error, and a winner could have been declared from the original election.
He brought the case to the J-Board, he said, because he felt that it had the power to make assumptions and decisions on that kind of matter that RNE does not have. The case never alleged that RNE made a mistake, but instead focused on asking the J-Board to make a decision that the committee could not.
The decision, he felt, instead seemed to focus on mistakes that were made by RNE in conducting the election. The decision lays out five new directives for RNE to follow to ensure that this does not happen again, but he pointed out that the committee is already doing three of them, and one of the remaining ones is inappropriate.
“The suggestion that missing ballots are the same as voided ballots is non-sensical,” he contended. “They don’t carry with them the same certainty.”
The hearing was “well-conducted,” he concluded, “but the decision represents that the members of the J-Board do not sufficiently understand the process of running an election.”
He is not yet certain whether he will be appealing the decision, or, if he does, for what reason. “I am keeping my options open at this point,” he said.
“I feel the Board made a good, solid, right decision,” said Chair of the Judicial Board Emilio Perez ’07. He admitted that “changing the GM was the difficult path to take,” but continued that the decision of the Board was unanimous and that he stands behind it. He also pointed out that the Board spent hours deliberating; the hearing started at 1 pm Friday and the Board did not finish until 8:30 pm.
Perez emphasized that it was not about either of the candidates, but about what was right, and he said he sympathized with both for what the candidates had to go through this year.
Perea was ecstatic upon hearing the news. “I am surprised and happy with the results,” he said. “I am working as hard as I can to maintain academic quality and also work as fast as I can to get the 37th Senate and the 140th Grand Marshal working together for the student body.”
He said his first priority will be calling an emergency Student Senate meeting to make all of the appointments that need to be done. Most of Freeman’s appointments will be repeated, while the Senate-Executive Board liaison will change—Perea is nominating Nick Wood ’07, who served in the position this year—and the chair of the Committee for the Judiciary and Student Rights may also change. He expects that Jason Rokeach ’08 will fill the latter position.
He also plans to call for the Senate to deal with recent meetings held by Quickstar, an Amway subsidiary, which is trying to induce RPI students to join a ponzi/pyramid business plan. He said he is concerned because the group is “suckering our students.”
As for the new greek life directives, he said that now that the referendum is in place, he will be looking to support the plans the Inter-Fraternity Council is making for trying to change the directives before July 1, when the ban on alcohol in fraternities takes effect.
“The IFC has really taken the lead on this,” he said. “I plan to support and assist the IFC in defending themselves and defending this campus from the gross atrocities that have been committed.”
Freeman chose not to comment on the matter.
The second case concerning the election heard by the J-Board last week was over whether the elections were conducted properly. Austin Randazzo ’07 argued that the election process did not follow the secret ballot requirement set by the Union Constitution and that the Senate was never granted the authority by the Constitution to conduct elections. For both of those reasons, Randazzo argued that the position should be considered vacant, and, as stipulated, under the Constitution, the Student Senate should select someone from within their ranks to serve as Grand Marshal.
The J-Board disagreed with both contentions. It said that the privacy requirement was never breached, but did point out that there was room for improvement in ballot design and asked RNE to examine alternatives that separate voter identity from the vote information. As for the authority to run elections, the J-Board decided that authority is implicitly given to the Senate because the Constitution gives no other body that responsibility.
Both decision letters are available below
