Formerly elected senator Nicholas Russo from the Muma College of Business has filed a request for trial against John Quiroz of the Elections Rules Commission (ERC) after losing his seat in the Student Government (SG) Senate.
Russo was elected into one of the eight open seats for the Muma College of Business following the SG general elections held in February, coming in at fourth place with 274 votes.
After candidate Joshua Smith was left off the ballot for the first six hours of voting, the ERC, which is responsible for supervising elections and maintaining election rules, held an expedited election from March 23 to 25.
Following the expedited election, Russo was notified that he was not elected into the Senate after placing 12th in the election, receiving 50 votes. He has filed the request for trial citing a violation of election codes under the premise that the ERC did not conduct a proper expedited election.
According to election rules, an expedited election is “any election held in the event that a Supreme Court ruling or other circumstances result in an election needing to be rescheduled. These elections will follow an abbreviated version of the original election schedule.”
As this particular expedited election was held following an input error, and not a scheduling conflict, Russo has requested that the ERC use the results from the general election to determine who should fill the seats in the senate, and find another solution to correct the errors resulting from the input discrepancy.
