When the Student Association Board of Elections and Membership initially reached out to write-in presidential candidate AJ Abell for a meeting, his campaign team assumed it would be a “nice to meet you, get to know each other kind of thing.”

But this wasn’t the case, said Bryce VanderBerg, Abell’s campaign manager.

“After AJ left the meeting, he texted us: ‘They’re trying to make it very difficult for us to even run a campaign,’” VanderBerg said.

During their meeting, VanderBerg said that Paulina Colon, chair of the Board of Elections and Membership, told Abell if voters didn’t correctly write Abell and his running mate Jonathan Dawson’s full first and last names, then the vote wouldn’t count. She also described write-in candidates as “joke candidates” to Abell, he said.

“She wasn’t giving us a fair shot at being able to really even run an effective campaign,” VanderBerg said.

Colon was not available for an interview on the matter.

VanderBerg then contacted the SA Board of Administrative Operations, which conducted an investigation into Colon’s activities.

“The Board of Administrative operations found several key instances where Mrs. Colon allowed personal relationships to get in the way of running a fair election,” said SA Parliamentarian Stephen Thomas, in an email.

“We opted to hold a vote of no confidence and adopt the outcome of that vote as our view point,” Thomas said.

Colon then stepped away from elections, deferring responsibilities to vice chair of elections, Janine Bogris.

“We wanted to ensure that the election was being run as fairly and efficiently as possible,” Bogris said.

SA has since been working with Abell and Dawson to better interpret and enforce the official by-laws regarding write-in campaigns, Bogris said.

Voters won’t need to write Abell and Dawson’s full first and last names for votes to be counted, she said. SA will accept Abell’s first name, a recognized nickname, or other entries “as long as (the board of elections and membership) can tell the intent and come to an agreement.”

All decisions on votes will be at the discretion of the eight people on the Board of Membership and Elections, and they may decide votes don’t count if they cannot be read, or state only the name of the vice-presidential candidate and not the president, Bogris added.

Bogris said because write-in candidates don’t have to follow rules set by SA, there is a “different dynamic” to the election process, and they are continuing to “close loopholes” as issues arise.

“I don’t think they’ve ever dealt with a write-in campaign like us, so I think a lot of the decisions have been knee-jerk reactions,” said Dawson, Abell’s running mate.

Dawson said SA has been more open to speaking with him and Abell recently, but there’s still a little uneasiness as to whether or not SA truly supports a write-in candidate having the opportunity to run.

There’s a long history of students with connections to SA having a much better chance of winning, he said.

“If you’re only having candidates run that are involved in SA and winning every year, not all voices are heard,” Dawson said. “AJ and I are coming from an outside place that brings something that’s not really there.”

Bogris said everyone at SU has an equal chance of winning a position in SA, and that the organization opens itself up to new people all the time.

“You don’t have to be a member to get the support of other members, what it really depends on is how you run your campaign,” she said.

Published on April 1, 2015 at 11:00 pm

Contact Lydia: lawilson@syr.edu