The last-minute attempt by one candidate for USG vice president to disqualify another has been canceled after sponsors of the appeal withdrew their support Friday evening. The series of events over Thanksgiving break delayed the release of all the results from the recent USG election, which will now be released Saturday morning.
One minute before the appeal period closed at noon Friday, vice presidential candidate and current U-Councilor Elan Kugelmass ’14 filed a formal appeal of the election managers’ decision not to penalize another vice presidential candidate, USG Campus and Community Affairs chair Carmina Mancenon ’14. At question was whether Mancenon had participated in early campaigning.
But that evening at around 11 p.m., two of the three sponsors of Kugelmass’ appeal – Undergraduate Life Committee chair Adi Rajagopalan ’13 and Class of 2014 senator Charissa Shen – withdrew their sponsorship in a joint, lengthy email to the USG Senate. The third sponsor of the appeal was Class of 2013 senator Andrew Blumenfeld, who did not withdraw his support.
As an appeal requires three sponsors to be presented to the USG Senate, Kugelmass’ appeal now lacks standing and will not be considered, according to USG chief elections manager Julian Dean ’13.
Dean is a former operations manager for The Daily Princetonian.
If Mancenon had been found to have engaged in early campaigning, she would have been charged with 47.5 penalty points. This would have brought her above the 50-point threshold that warrants disqualification.
“Before running, I didn’t realize how much politics I was signing up for. I am an engineer,” Mancenon said.
Kugelmass first reported Mancenon’s alleged violation via email to Dean on Monday, Nov. 12, arguing that her campaign website went live prior to the appropriate time as explained by the Elections Handbook.
Kugelmass claimed that he did not receive any reply from the elections managers after first reporting the violation. Kugelmass contacted the elections managers again on Nov. 15, and they then agreed to investigate the matter. According to Kugelmass, the elections managers found no evidence to substantiate the claims regarding early publication of Mancenon’s website at that time.
“Very early on Thursday morning, I continued investigating privately,” Kugelmass said. Kugelmass said he discovered a link to Mancenon's website with a time stamp indicating the date of Nov. 11 on a Google search. Kugelmass submitted a screenshot of this evidence to the elections managers at 1:54 a.m. on Thursday, Nov. 22.
Nevertheless, Dean said the election managers were not able to definitively prove Mancenon guilty before the 12 p.m. Friday deadline, which marks the end of the appeal period.
“Because we were not able to definitively prove the implication of the Google search screenshot, we decided not to penalize Carmina,” Dean said, explaining that the date on the screenshot was ambiguous and that making an informed decision required a “technical understanding of Google search results.”
Mancenon explained that the date of Nov. 11 appears next to the search result for her website because she has owned the domain name of the website for one year, since she began her campaign for Campus and Community Affairs chair. “But I never published anything on Nov. 11,” Mancenon said.
Dean notified Kugelmass via email that further investigation could only be done with the submission of a full appeal that would give the elections managers more time to investigate the issue. Kugelmass submitted a full appeal to the elections managers at 11:59 a.m., one minute before the election closed.
Because Mancenon would not have enough time to appeal a disqualification made by the elections managers at that time, the USG Senate would have met on Sunday night to vote on whether to disqualify Mancenon from the race, Dean said. But as the complaint has been dismissed and no complaints remain outstanding, election results can now be tallied.
If Kugelmass’s appeal had been successful, Mancenon would have been disqualified and another vote would have been held next week between the remaining two vice presidential candidates, Kugelmass, and Daniel Johnson ’15, Dean said.
Johnson is also a copy editor and contributing news writer for The Daily Princetonian.
“I hope that a small complaint like this doesn’t discount all my effort and desire to serve as vice president,” Mancenon said.
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