In a unanimous decision, the Election Committee, which was comprised of Zeeya Jamal '02, Lincoln Mayer '04, David Bugge '04E, Alex Ulianov '03E and Luke Swarthout '04, ruled that the results from the election will stand: Sparrow received 242 votes, with Michael Flood '03 getting 201 votes.
The results of the election has been originally contested by Flood, who claimed that two particular e-mails sent by Sparrow and his supporters violated sections of the SGO Code of Elections.
The Elections Committee held an open hearing on Feb. 18, in which Sparrow and Flood made statements and answered questions.
Flood contested an email sent by SFC cultural sub-committee chair David Jaquette '02 to club leaders and encouraged them to vote for Sparrow. Jaquette is in charge of allocating funds to those clubs.
"The email may have created an implication that ... these clubs have a financial interest in the continuation of the Sparrow administration," said Flood in his statement at Monday's hearing.
The Elections Committee performed a confidential investigation into the degree of influence that Ja-quette's email had on club leaders and their members. The Committee, in a statement distributed to all students, said that "the response from club leaders was strong and unanimous, regardless of the candidate preference of each respective leader, that they felt no intent at coercion from Jaquette's email."
"We do not consider Dave Jaquette to be a representative of Blake Sparrow solely because he was a supporter of Sparrow's candidacy," the statement said. "The term 'representative' implies that Dave Jaquette was acting in the stead of Xavier Blake Sparrow, which neither was accused nor substantiated in testimony. For these reasons, we find that neither Blake Sparrow nor Dave Jaquette is guilty of violating the Code of Elections, Article II, Section 7, Paragraph D."
"My e-mail was nothing more than a public endorsement," said Jaquette. "The bottom line is that there was no quid pro quo, or 'this for that,' and I think that became very clear during the course of the hearing and the investigation."
Jaquette was not called to testify at Monday's hearing.
Flood was troubled by the fact that Jaquette was not used as a witness at the hearing. "[The Elections Committee] made a variety of assumptions about his involvement in this campaign in order to justify their ruling," said Flood.
"I am confused as to why they did not call on club leaders to testify in public about their impressions of the email they received-as people involved with the SGO-from the cultural chair of the SFC," Flood added.
In response to Flood's claim that Jaquette's email violated SGO policy, the Elections Committee said that because Jaquette was not a "representative" of Sparrow, that there was no violation of policy. "The e-mail advocates one candidate over another and thus can be considered a 'campaign email,'" reads the statement. "Usually an 'SGO email list' is considered to be a mailing list of the entire school or of an entire class. We feel, however, that a more exact definition is of 'any list assembled for the purpose of relating SGO business.'"
"In this case, however, the group of 30 names emailed by Dave Jaquette was assembled from a similar, if not identical, list to the one he used to contact cultural club heads for SGO business," the statement said. "The fact that Dave Jaquette addressed his letter 'Hi Leaders' indicates that his relationship to them and the reason that they were on this email list was based on his responsibilities a member of the SFC."
"The Committee seemed to be somewhat confused about what an SGO 'mailing list' is," said Flood. "After creating a definition of such a list they ruled in a manner that contradicted their definition."
The second email that Flood cited as a violation of the Code of Elections was one sent by Sparrow, who is also the president of the Class of 2004. Flood said that Sparrow violated his all-class email privilege when he reminded his classmates of the upcoming election.
The Elections Committee explained in its campus-wide email that Sparrow has consistently reminded the sophomores to participate in upcoming elections, as he had done in previous elections. "[The email] neither endorsed nor mentioned any candidate or position. The Committee has determined that Sparrow's use of the email list to send such a reminder falls under the purview of 'SGO business' and therefore does not violate either the letter or spirit of the Code of Elections," stated the Committee's report.
"The Committee apparently did not feel than an email from Sparrow to his class might have had the power to influence votes, but the results seem to strongly suggest otherwise," said Flood. "The fact that voter turnout in the sophomore class accounted for this result says that Sparrow's email may indeed have played a deciding role in this close election."
Flood thought it "strange" that the Committee did not call on any other witnesses to testify besides him and Sparrow. "Although the Committee did not hear from Anishah Cumber '02, they apparently felt quite comfortable ruling on what she may or may not have laid out as appropriate elections behavior," added Flood.
Cumber was asked to step down from the Elections Committee and to not attend the hearing because she was a potential witness.
"Overall … everything was handled well," said Cumber, even though she played no role in the decision to use the results from the past election. "I have a tremendous amount of confidence in those appointed to serve on the Committee and believe they had reasons for adjudicating the case the way they did."
"I believe that the hearing was handled very well," said Sparrow. "I agree wholeheartedly with the Election Committee."
Although Flood was disappointed by the hearing and the Election Committee's decision, he is optimistic that the new constitution will prevent similar conflicts. "I have much faith that the new constitution will ensure a more detailed and fair process for elections and election contestations," said Flood.