After much anticipation, freshman Kenny Bain was announced to be the newest member of the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Judiciary last Thursday. The count comes after controversial election that encompassed delays in counting the ballots and a violation of the election rules by one of the candidates.
The runner up, sophomore Phillip Berenbroick, was 45 votes short of Bain's 184 votes. Freshman Daniel Mandell finished third out of the three candidates with 125 votes. There were 119 ballots cast the day of the election, Oct. 4, that only cast a vote for the freshman elections.
The vote was delayed after the Elections Board (ELBO) was unable to conduct the elections on the date scheduled. Once the votes were in, the count itself was held up by allegations that candidate Berenbroick violated ELBO rules when an e-mail was sent out advocating his candidacy. Election policy states that e-mails advocating a certain candidate are only acceptable if the candidate was unaware of the e-mail.
The ELBO, comprised only of senior Valentino Carsuo, investigated the matter. Caruso decided that though the e-mail was in violation of the rules, he would allow Berenbroick's votes to be counted because of an incident during the freshman election in which a similar incident occurred and the candidate's votes were counted anyway.
In the end, the controversy did not matter, as Berenbroick did not win the seat.
Bain said his strategy was not affected by the controversies of the past two weeks. Though he wishes he had deon more campaigning during the gap between when the elections were scheduled and when they actually occurred, in hindsight, his campaign still worked.
"It was more of a silent campaign. I really didn't want to push or anything," he said. "I didn't want to campaign very much."
In line with his relaxed campaign are his campaign promises.
"I didn't really promise anything," he said. "The only promise I gave was that I would be impartial and fair to every case that came to us."
Bain was happy with the results of the e-mail debacle too, and felt was handled fairly.
TCUJ members say they are happy that the controversy has been resolved. The TCUJ and Senate, however, cannot have anything to do with the elections, because its their members who are being voted upon.
"Val was being cautious in what he was doing, but I am glad at the way they turned out," TCUJ vice-chair Alison Clarke said.
