On the third day of the Weber State University legislative elections, the WSUSA Elections Committee received two more grievances on Wednesday, but responded with no sanctions.
Both grievances were issued to Hispanic student candidate Jackeline Bedoya Wilkinson by an opponent who claimed that Wilkinson had violated the spending limits section in the elections packet.
Election rules require that “the total amount of money to be spent by any candidate competing for a legislative position is not to exceed that of $250.”
According to one of the grievances filed, the accuser stated that Wilkinson had exceeded her spending limit by wearing a rented dress that was worth at least $80 per day. The accuser claimed that her opponent and her campaigning partners were all wearing dresses from the same vendor.
The grievance was taken under consideration on Wednesday when the elections committee ruled the cost of dresses fell within the spending limits of the campaign.
The committee deemed the grievance not a violation and no sanction was applied to Wilkinson’s campaign, said elections committee member and current student Senate vice chair Kami May.
“The grievance about the dress was determined not to be a violation because she followed policy as best she could given the nature of the vendor from which she had purchased the rentals,” May said.
Likewise, the second grievance was also filed against Wilkinson for her spending limits. The accuser claimed that Wilkinson was passing out candy as part of her campaign and believed that she had not properly applied it to her spending form.
However, after looking over Wilkinson’s forms, no sanction was applied because she had not exceeded her spending limits.
“We went through all the logistics of her receipts and forms and found that she was actually not violating any policies, so it wasn’t an actual grievance,” said elections committee member Sarah Arnold.
Despite not issuing any sanctions in response to the grievances, one sanction was applied to candidate Larry Robinson as of Wednesday after he turned in his spending forms.
Robinson failed to hand in his receipts on the Monday deadline and also missed the first half of Tuesday during this week of elections. He was sanctioned 25 percent of his votes acquired during that time period.
May said that the senator elections are going smoothly despite all the grievances and sanctions.
“With such a high number of candidates from so many different backgrounds, there’s going to be confusion and some breakdown in communication,” she said. “But it’s been going really well, and we haven’t had any major issues so far in this election.”
Voting in the legislative elections will continue through noon Thursday with the announcement of the new student senators on Friday.
