Case 48: Golden v ASUCD Elections Committee

Daniel Golden v. ASUCD Elections Committee (Winter 2010) was an ASUCD Court appeal filed February 3, 2010 of a January 27, 2010 Elections Committee decision to allow a candidate for office extra time to gather petition signatures if informed that one's submitted petition is short of the required number after the deadline. It asked the Court to prohibit the Elections Committee from allowing deadline extensions unless explicitly permitted in the Elections Codes, and asks the Court to bar the ticket in question from appearing on the ballot.

The Court accepted the case on February 3, 2010 and heard oral arguments at 6:15pm February 10, 2010 in the Angelina Malfitano Conference Room on the 3rd Floor of Memorial Union. The Court held, in a 4-2 decision announced February 12, that the Elections Committee exceeded its authority and prohibited it from placing Blanco and Patel on the ballot. The Court sat with only six members because there were two vacancies, and Justice Ryan Meyerhoff recused himself as Golden is his housemate.

An ASUCD President/Vice President ticket is required to collect 250 signatures and student ID numbers in a one week period from four weeks before the start of voting to three weeks before. The ticket is permitted to collect additional signatures as a buffer against invalid ID numbers or signatures.

Presidential candidate Sergio Blanco and Vice Presidential candidate Vishakha Patel submitted their petition on the January 27, 2010 deadline for the Winter 2010 General Election, which on its face had the required number of signatures. The Elections Committee checked 25% of the list and found that the proportion of valid signatures in that sample would project a number short of the 250 required. The Elections Committee therefore checked validity of the entire petition and found that the number of valid signatures was short of 250. The Elections Committee convened informally and granted the Blanco/Patel ticket additional time to gather the required signatures.

It is important to note that while the subject that there were similarly situated candidates for Senate, the Court did not address the Senate candidate eligibility.

Golden alleged that the Elections Committee does not have the discretion to grant additional time, citing bylaw 402:

"The Elections Committee does not have any power beyond that explicitly granted to them in the ASUCD Bylaws."

He therefore implored the Court to base its ruling on the pertinent portions of bylaw 405:

"The official petition...must be returned no later than three (3) weeks prior to the first day of the Election....
"Executive Tickets must obtain two hundred fifty (250) signatures and UC Davis Student ID numbers of current ASUCD members."

• Did the ASUCD Elections Committee act in accordance with the ASUCD Constitution and the ASUCD Bylaws when it granted the Blanco/Patel ticket a deadline extension with which it could obtain the requisite 250 petitions?
  

• Can the resulting certification of the Blanco/Patel ticket stand?

• On the first question, no, the ASUCD Elections Committee acted in violation of Bylaws 402 and 405 §A and §C by granting the Blanco/Patel ticket a twenty-four hour extension.
  

• On the second question, the held that, no, the Blanco/Patel ticket cannot be considered to be certified and cannot appear on the elections ballot.

Case 48 Majority Opinion and Karimi concurrence.pdf

The Court, in an opinion authored by Justice Daniel Maroon held 5 to 1 that the Court has jurisdiction to consider the matter under its Article VII, Section 2 powers as "the ultimate authority to interpret the wording of the ASUCD Constitution and any legislation enacted pursuant thereof", including any Elections bylaws. They also held that Section 2 gives them the power to "review complaints regarding the Elections Committee." The Court dismissed the Section 8 restriction limiting the Court's jurisdiction over elections matters to appeals, stating "that section pertains to complaints regarding individual candidates and not the Elections Committee itself."

The Court reasoned that the bylaws required that the only persons eligible to appear on the executive ballot are those that had obtained 250 valid signatures by the deadline of three weeks before the start of elections. The Court further held that Bylaw 402 tightly circumscribed the Elections Committee's discretion "to an extent unrivaled by any other statutorily established committee or commission." The Court therefore held that the Elections Committee "acted outside of its tightly circumscribed powers in extending the deadline by which the satisfactory official petition should be returned."

The Court then turned to what should be done with the Blanco/Patel ticket. In a 4 to 2 decision, the Court held that the Article 7, Section 8 restriction against the Court sanctioning a candidate did not apply in this case, because the certification of the ticket should never have been issued in the first place, and therefore Blanco and Patel were never candidates. They therefore held that because only official candidates may appear on the ballot, Blanco and Patel may not appear. They also specifically ruled Blanco and Patel ineligible to appear on the ballot under bylaw 413E, because the ticket was never a candidate in the first place.

The Court concluded by rejecting the Elections Committee's assertion that the Bylaw 402 "'fair and impartial clause' grants the Elections Committee broad enough discretion to alter the specific elections guidelines within the Bylaws." and that Bylaw 413(E) does not prohibit the Elections Committee from removing the ticket from the ballot.

Justice Karimi adds in concurrence that the Elections Committee exercised a power that was specifically reserved to the Senate. He states that while the extension policy formulated by the Elections Committee served a legitimate purpose, the Committee should have brought its proposed policy to the Senate to amend the Elections Bylaws.

He holds that the election under the bylaws were already fair, and that the Elections Committee's policy, while it served a purpose that made the election "fairer," was not necessary to ensure a fair and impartial election, and therefore the Elections Committee exceeded its authority.

Karimi then holds that because the Blanco/Patel ticket did not have enough valid ID numbers/signature pairs by the January 27 deadline, it cannot be approved as a candidate.

Case 48 Miller dissent in part.pdf

Justice Miller concurred with the majority's holding that the Elections Committee had exceeded its authority. However, she disagreed with the Court's order that the Elections Committee not place Blanco and Patel on the ballot. She argues that the Court's jurisdiction does not permit it to mandate the removal of candidates from the ballot and "infringes on the original jurisdiction of the Elections Committee."

Justice Miller believes the question of certifying Blanco and Patel should have been remanded to the Elections Committee, and that the Committee would have been free to rule that to remove Blanco and Patel at this late stage would upset the Committee's duty under Bylaw 402 to ensure a fair and impartial election.

Case 48 Whitney dissent.pdf

Chief Justice Whitney noted that she noted the Court's probable jurisdiction, but she dissented with the majority's ruling in its entirety.

Whitney examined Bylaw 405A and noted that it required petitions to be turned in three weeks before the start of the Election, and notes that the Blanco/Patel ticket did do that. She therefore examined Bylaw 405C to determine whether the Elections Committee had exceeded its authority. She holds that when the Bylaws are silent on an elections issue, the Elections Committee has the discretion to take an action that ensures a fair and impartial election.

Whitney also rejected the majority's holding that the restrictive "explicitly granted" clause in Bylaw 402 gave the Elections Committee no discretion because the "fairly and impartially" clause specifically granted some degree of discretion. She states that the logical result of a literal reading of the bylaws is that the Blanco/Patel ticket would be left in a limbo neither certified to appear on the ballot nor disqualified from appearing. Therefore, she held that the Committee made a reasonable decision to certify the Blanco/Patel ticket that conforms to the Constitution's eligibility requirements and retained a fair election. She further held that Section 6 of the Student's Bill of Rights guaranteeing the "right to a fair vote" empowered the Elections Committee to formulate its policy.

Whitney then rejected the majority's holding that the Court has the authority to prohibit the Committee from placing the Blanco/Patel ticket on the ballot. She holds that the action to take Blanco and Patel off the ballot when originally certified serves as an indirect sanction prohibited by Article VII, Section 8, and that, "whether indirect or not, the Court does not have the authority to sanction a candidate."

She holds further that the majority's decision is tantamount to turning the Blanco/Patel ticket into a "disqualified candidate" subject to the protection of Bylaw 413E that the ticket cannot be removed from the ballot until Blanco and Patel have exhausted all of their possible appeals.

Whitney further wrote that the Court should restrain itself to elections matters that involve in a situation that unfairly favors one candidate. She does not believe that the Elections Committee's policy constituted such an unfair act.

Golden Complaint Page 1.jpg
Golden Complaint Page 2.jpg
SB.26.Winter.05.doc
Letter to Candidates.jpg - Letter included in elections packet detailing petitions deadlines. (Page 1 of 2)

Amicus_Curiae_by_Laabs_48.doc (Friend of the Court brief in support of appellant)
Amicus_Curiae_by_Koo_48.pdf (Friend of the Court brief in support of neither party)

Case 48 Majority Opinion and Karimi concurrence.pdf
Case 48 Miller dissent in part.pdf
Case 48 Whitney dissent.pdf

Comments:

2010-02-04 16:44:43   This is the first time I've included Comments on a page, but given that this is a current case, I thought it might be useful to be able to have a discussion of the issues outside of the factual language of the main article. —JeremyKoo

2010-02-04 19:48:49   While there is a witness section on the complaint form, and names are included, I want to point out that court procedure does not facilitate the inclusion of witness statements. (Old outdated forms) —RyanMeyerhoff

2010-02-07 09:19:30   Haven't been on the wiki in a long while! As Jon Leathers said on the previous page, please keep posting info so I can relive my college years. Nothing like the forces of ASUCD arguing over a bylaw line. —JamesMSchwab

2010-02-14 15:06:14   Interesting case, hopefully the Court had some fun dealing with it. I'm just glad to see that ASUCD has a functioning Court with enough members to make these decisions. Now the ASUCD universe can be back in balance with half of the people upset with the Elections Committee for its initial decision and the other half upset with the Court for its reversal of said decision. —JonathonLeathers

2010-02-15 22:15:09   A good old fashioned ASUCD Election SNAFU. I've been there... —RobRoy