"After careful consideration of the arguments made and a close reading of the [SGO] Constitution, this Election Committee unanimously finds the contestation of the April 4, 2002 referendum to be valid," read the decision issued by the election committee.
The results issued following the election declared that 261 people voted of which 170 voted yay and 83 voted nay; there were eight abstentions which were not included in the calculation of vote percentages. The vote tally signifies that two thirds of the those voting ratified the constitution. However, the language of the proposed constitution does not stipulate whether a two thirds majority or over half of the students voting were necessary to ratify the constitution.
Kaufman issued his contestation of the reading of the election results at 8:06 p.m. on Monday night, two days following the release of the results. Typically elections must be contested within 24 hours of the closing of the polls. SGO President Michelle Oliveros-Larsen '02 explained to the Senate at their meeting on Monday that Kaufman's contestation was a special case because the contestation had to do with the reading of the vote.
The Senate decided Monday that the contestation would be reviewed at a hearing by an elections committee. Members of the committee were Oliveros-Larsen, Vice President Matthew Moses '02, Recording Secretary Zeeya Jamal '02, and Senators Alexander Ulianov '02 and Caetlin Ofiesh '02.
Oliveros-Larsen decided that both Monday night's Senate meeting and the hearing would proceed under the old constitution.
"We've held off operating under the new constitution until we can be sure that we have a new constitution," said Oliveros-Larsen.
Kaufman presented his contestation at the hearing and constitution committee member Luke Swarthout '04 spoke in defense of the election results.
Kaufman made two arguments before the elections committee. The first declared that the eight abstentions should have been included in the number of total votes. Including the abstentions, the final percentages would show that 65.1 percent of those voting chose the new constitution as opposed to the 67 percent that was calculated. More than 66.6 percent would be required to approve the new constitution. "The fact is that, numerically, this was judged incorrectly," said Kaufman.
Kaufman turned to the adoption language used to ratify the old SGO constitution for adoption language of the new constitution, since there was no adoption language in the proposed constitution. "It seems natural to read this as requiring two thirds of the total votes cast for ratification," read his contestation.
Kaufman also argued that in order to amend the old constitution, a two thirds vote of the total voting population of the student body would be required because the new constitution should be considered as an amendment to the old one, requiring such a vote.
Swarthout argued that Kaufman's contestation was invalid on several points.
First, Swarthout suggested that the contestation of the election should have been filed within 48 hours of the start of the election. "Receiving this petition after that [48-hour cut off] sets a bad precedent indicating that any student may protest a referendum at any point after its results are released," said Swarthout.
Second, Swarthout argued that Kaufman's two arguments were contradictory and went on to argue that Kaufman's use of the former constitution was irrelevant to the ratification of the new constitution. "It is no longer 1995, nor are we adopting an SGO constitution, nor is there any language in the constitution to suggest that this process would be used as guidance for adopting a future constitution," said Swarthout.
Finally, Swarthout argued that because the new constitution sought to replace the former it was not an amendment and did not fall under the rules for amendment to the old constitution.
The election committee issued their decision on Tuesday night. They upheld the contestation on the grounds that it should be considered an amendment to the former constitution. "We believe that the referendum in question is an amendment in nature because it 'alters the ... fundamental structure of the Constitution,'" read their decision, quoting article seven of the old constitution.
"We certainly didn't rule based on what our opinions were about the constitution," said Ofiesh. "To be fair to both parties we went directly to the old constitution that applied. We tried to be as objective as possible."
The committee also made a recommendation to the constitutional
committee that they write into the new constitution language for adopting the document and send it to a second referendum. "We hope that you will consider institution adoption language which specifies the percentage of those who voted needed for ratification," read the recommendation.
"I am surprised and impressed," said Kaufman of the committee's decision. "I wasn't expecting it."