Altman ’11, Yaroshefsky ’12 penalized for infractions

Altman received 15 penalty points for online campaigning infractions, while Yaroshefsky received 20 points for campaign literature violations.

Candidates with 10 or more penalty points must remove online campaign materials, while candidates with 20 or more points also lose the right to send campaign e-mails. Candidates who receive 50 penalty points or more are disqualified from the election.

“A few of the e-mails that went out to student groups supporting me CCed recipients instead of of BCCing them,” Altman said in an e-mail. “The rule is they have to BCC if it’s not a listserv to protect people’s privacy. Also, one was missing the disclaimer.”

Yaroshefsky received 20 penalty points from the elections managers on Sunday evening for campaign spending. Yaroshefsky and elections managers said the overspending was the result of a miscommunication and was therefore punished less harshly.

On Sunday, Altman said Yaroshefsky printed 350 five-inch-by-eight-inch color index cards for his campaign. The 350 index cards Yaroshefsky initially printed cost more than $80, Altman said, noting that the spending limit for each candidate is capped at $30.

The election guidelines call for a candidate to be penalized 10 points for each dollar spent above the $30 limit.

But Yaroshefsky said he did not overspend on the index cards.

“I only spent $14.99 on 1,000 index cards and then used my own inkjet printer,” he explained. “I was going to use $10 worth of the cards. The problem comes in when you try to apply the USG printing rates for letter-sized flyers down to the index cards, which is exactly what I thought the elections managers had told me to ignore.”

Yaroshefsky said he had asked the elections managers — Peter Dunbar ’10, Aditya Panda ’10 and Alex Rosen ’11 — about the index cards, and they had told him he did not need to report the printing costs.

“The rules do not specify how to account for printed index cards, so I asked the elections managers how to report them if I printed them,” Yaroshefsky said in an e-mail. “Their response led me to believe that I should just report the cost of the index cards themselves, and I followed up with a confirmation of what I purchased and how I would report them.”

In a joint e-mail, the elections managers said that Yaroshefsky’s follow-up email stated that he had purchased $15 worth of cards and that he intended to use $10 worth.

“After I had printed and distributed them, they told me I should have also reported the printing costs, but they admitted the ambiguity in their original directions,” he continued.

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Yaroshefsky and the three elections managers declined to provide their e-mail correspondance.

“The Elections Managers sent Yaroshefsky an e-mail meant to explain that in addition to a pricing scheme for printing on index cards that Yaroshefsky had proposed, he should also account for the cost of the cards themselves,” the three elections managers said in a joint e-mail. “Yaroshefsky interpreted the e-mail to mean that he should account solely for the cost of the index cards. We were sufficiently convinced that Yaroshefsky did in good faith take a different interpretation of the e-mail.”

Yaroshefsky said the elections managers were “incredibly professional” in handling the situation, but he added, “I wish they hadn’t accidentally misled me and then penalized me.”

Yaroshefsky’s Facebook group had not been removed as of Monday evening, though it was made private.

“The 20 penalty points Yaroshefsky received dictate, as per the candidate handbook, that he disable his Facebook group and website. We are satisfied with his compliance,” Dunbar said in an e-mail.

Altman said he did not intend to file a formal complaint about the violation or its handling.

“The decision to give Yaroshefsky 20 points instead of thousands was made because there was an e-mail exchange that Yaroshefsky claims was ambiguous, although to be honest it seemed very clear to me,” Altman said, referring to the communication between Yaroshefsky and the elections managers.