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Last updated: Thursday, May 24, 11:59 a.m.
Breaking News | News

Knoblock, Ortiz win out in controversial SG election

President-elect, VP runner-up leading fight for new election

By Christopher Crosby and Michael Shepherd
Posted on Oct. 28, 2010, at 6:15 p.m.

Student Sen. Chris Knoblock and current Vice President of Student Organizations Anthony Ortiz have been named as the victors in the Thursday election for student body president and vice president, respectively.

However, Knoblock, his opponent, student Sen. Nelson Carson and vice presidential runner-up Ryan Gavin are contesting the legitimacy of the election. Over the weekend, Gavin said he is going to draft a formal contest form and submit it to the Fair Elections and Practices Committee of the General Student Senate.

Knoblock and Carson both confirmed that they would co-sign it with Gavin while Ortiz voiced opposition to their efforts.

“The results may or may not show the actual outcome,” Knoblock said in a conference call with Gavin and The Maine Campus Friday night. “According to these results, I won the election. But, at the same time, I don’t see the results of that election being completely and totally representative of the student body.”

Gavin said he fielded more than 160 complaints of voting boxes not being available to students on their FirstClass desktops. He also said an e-mail was promised to be sent by current Student Body President Brian Harris to all students about the election’s issues and how to vote.

The message ended up being placed in that FirstClass election box instead — making it invisible to the students who did not have the box in the first place.

Ortiz, reached Friday, said the problems with the election did not put any one candidate at a disadvantage.

“The technical issues affected everybody — everybody had people that were trying to vote,” he said. “I obviously think everyone should have the right to vote if they want to. I also think there were opportunities for any student who really wanted to vote to go to [vote in person at] the Wade Center.”

“There were three different options if you really wanted to vote,” he continued, referencing online elections, paper ballots and absentee ballots.

Gavin and Knoblock responded harshly to Ortiz’s characterization of the vote.

“That right there embodies what’s wrong with student government right now,” Gavin said. “The notion that it was unfair to everybody so it’s fair to everybody — I think that’s complete crap.”

“There’s no way to quantify how unfair it was to each person and that’s the real problem here,” Knoblock said. “It kind of does disappoint me.”

The election tallies were reasonably close, as Knoblock defeated fellow student Sen. Nelson Carson 891-762, while Ortiz beat Gavin 931-886. 2,011 votes were cast by students on FirstClass as opposed to 14 in person.

The election was marred early on by a 37-minute delay in establishing the online voting system.

According to FirstClass administrator Colleen Willett Martin, students who tried to vote when the voting period began at 9 a.m. were unable to do so. A database problem prevented students from voting online until 9:37. The deadline for the election’s end was switched from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m to compensate for time in which students could not vote.

“All of those problems should render the election completely illegitimate,” Gavin said. “The things that we saw yesterday were completely ridiculous.”

Gavin said complaints about the election on subjects such as IT are heard by the FEPC, but complaints about the FEPC’s handling of the election itself are heard by the GSS. Since he expects to author his document as a complaint against both, the senate will hear it either at Tuesday’s regularly scheduled meeting or at a special meeting within the week.

“I think the senate needs to know what’s going on here and senate needs to decide,” Gavin said.

Knoblock said though he was “upset” at Ortiz’s remarks, it would not affect their working relationship should the current election results stand.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 28th, 2010, 6:15 pm. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.

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  • Derek

    On Thursday I was at work in Bangor. The computers at my office do not have firstclass on them. But I went to work at 8:30 believing that I could vote via the web browser. I was wrong. I wondered how many votes were lost because of this simple mistake. Also, it is my understanding that certain versions of firstclass, other than the web browsers version, do not support the voting system. Again I wondered how many votes were lost because of this. I then learned that from 9:00 am to 9:40 am on Thursday students were unable to access the voting system on firstclass at all. Again, I wondered how my votes were lost because of this. Then they promised us that an email would be sent out explaining that the voting would be pushed back to 6pm to make up for this glitch. But it was not sent out; it was sent to the firstclass voting icon, and yet again, I found myself wondering how many votes were lost because of this. Lastly, there was a period of time when the only option for president was Knoblock. How many votes were lost because of that mistake? We need a reelection. We as students must stand up and say that our elections must be fair. The FEPC should be preparing all year for this day. It should run flawlessly. In a close election this is essential. One mistake can account for a 45-vote difference, but many mistakes? how is that fair?

  • Allison

    I agree that the issues regarding the election, although an attempt was made to compensate for the various errors, leave little to no other option than a new election. When I initially signed onto firstclass around lunch time to vote the field where candidates should have appeared in order to be selected for was empty, leaving the only selectable option to write-in a vote. Without voting, I logged out of and back into firstclass, whereupon the issue had resolved itself. However, had I not done that and gone to the next window to place my vote for vice president, I would have lost the opportunity to vote for a candidate for president because the voting system counts a null selection as having voted. It is quite possible that other students did in fact lose their vote to an empty screen, which along with the various other errors is unfair to students and would throw off the results.

    What harm would a new election cause? If the outcome was not impinged upon by the errors experienced, the current victors should achieve the same results and if the vote was affected than the true sentiments of the students should be recognized, whether it is only to re-affirm the sentiments already expressed by this outcomes, perhaps even showing that the two currently elected candidates won by a greater majority or to show that students by majority actually voted for a different outcome.