Election mess

In a bizarre move by the Elections Board, former TCU President Melissa Carson's seat was filled by junior Cristina Gioioso in an uncontested election less than a week after Carson's departure. The three freshmen members of ELBO appear to have violated the current version of the by-laws on their website by advertising fewer than ten academic days prior to the election, which had been scheduled for tomorrow.

Though the by-laws indicate that Daily ads are sufficient notification for students on the Medford campus, the two full-page ads that ran last week were not enough. A campus-wide e-mail would have helped spread the word, and it would have reached students studying abroad as well (another stipulation of the online by-laws). ELBO has employed such methods in the past, so it not clear why it chose not to do so this time.

It is also unclear why the election was so rushed. Interested candidates were required to obtain the 100 required signatures to qualify for the ballot within a matter of days, certainly no small task.

But perhaps the most disturbing revelation of the non-election is that the junior who ran uncontested is a housemate of TCUJ member Abby Moffat, Senate Vice President Andrew Potts' girlfriend. She's not quite someone who could be considered a senate outsider.

So to sum up: an election for a senate seat was held days after it became vacant and the only student that came up with a valid petition is part of a social circle that includes a TCUJ member and the Senate vice president.

Maybe there's nothing wrong with this _ after all, it's entirely possible that ELBO could have advertised the election in a mass e-mail and given people more time to collect signatures, and Gioioso still could have run uncontested. But the combination of circumstances is troublesome.

ELBO may have only freshmen members, but it needs to stick to its guns. Election controversy has plagued the campus in the past, and ELBO rarely comes out smelling like a rose. If its members simply followed their operating procedure to the book, it is hard to imagine there would be any accusations of election improprieties.