Editorial

Unexpected, Unprecedented, Unbelievable.

Just when you thought it couldn't get worse...

Five months ago, when Florida's quarreling canvassing committees loaded millions of Floridian ballots into the back of Ryder trucks and sent them up to Tallahassee for the umpteenth recount and the umpteenth disagreement, the world shook its head and wondered just how a nation that paved the way for liberal democracies everywhere could have fallen so far.

Let there be no further debate about how this happened: the city, county, state and federal officials involved - who botched the proceedings so thoroughly that no matter whoever emerged victorious would still be deemed illegitimate - all got their start at university-level student governments like the one at the University of Oregon.

Suddenly, it all becomes that much clearer. Incompetent twentysomethings become incompetent fortysomethings; the only variable, apart from age, is the propensity to cause wholesale damage to the system on a much larger scale.

So take that in mind when you survey the electoral catastrophe that has befallen the ASUO this term. Of course, the ASUO is certainly no stranger to such confusion, as the Oregon Daily Emerald noted (in the rare display of a memory of history prior to the current school term) in the March 7 article "Grievances are nothing new in ASUO elections." For at least five years running, the standard routine has gone something like this: First the weeks of the primary and general election, with grievances scattered throughout, followed by oral arguments before the Constitution Court, a ruling, a vote count, and finally, at the end of it all, a victor.

Last year the ASUO presidential contest wasn't decided until after spring break. This year, the general election itself won't have even happened by then.

Instead of organizing our own summary of the current events, we'll let the recent Emerald headlines serve as our chronological guide to what will surely prove (until next year of course) to be the most embarrassing ASUO Election of all time.

"Grievances could disqualify Jacobson, Cook"
(Feb. 23, 2001)

No great surprise here. The last time one of the major tickets for the ASUO Executive did not face disqualification, David Letterman was still on NBC.

The Elections Board, headed by Coordinator Shantell Rice, wisely decided to postpone a decision on whether to remove Bret Jacobson and Matt Cook from the ballot until after the polls closed at 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, March 1. To date, it has been their only smart move.

Even before the voting began, the credibility of the election began to erode as a compromised and confused E-Board made error upon error, and the grievances started to fly. Among them was the arguably insignificant protestation of OSPIRG's poster placement (full disclosure: the grievance was filed by this magazine's editor). The E-Board eventually ruled against the grievance, citing insufficient evidence, but the point was made: OSPIRG had stapled their campaign posters to departmental bulletin boards, classroom boards and so forth, questionable if not illegal outright. This was further driven home when the general elections got underway, and OSPIRG briefly unveiled a new poster containing the names of ASUO programs and individuals who supported their program. This was fine, except for the fact that not every name on the poster had been explicitly approved.

By this time, the E-Board had already compromised its integrity. Matt Swanson, a member of the board until his resignation this week, had already filed a grievance against candidate Eric Bailey, violating the impartiality which the board should by all means protect.

"After board decision, it's Brooklyn and Bailey"
(Mar. 02, 2001)

When the results came in on the Thursday of the primary elections, Nilda Brooklyn and Joy Nair led the pack by a significant margin. Both well-connected ASUO employees unafraid to campaign on the basis of their gender and ethnicity, their success was all but assured. Dark horse candidate Bret Jacobson, late of an Emerald columnist position, was more of a surprise. Running on the most conservative platform of any Executive candidate in recent memory, Jacobson's convincing victory was only temporary. Jacobson and Cook, accused by VP candidate Jeff Oliver of illegally distributing flyers in the residence halls, were removed from the ballot that same evening. Though two years prior Wylie Chen and Mitra Anoushiravani had been found guilty of the exact same thing though allowed to take office nevertheless, no one could locate a copy of the ConCourt's decision on the matter.

Whatever precedent that might have provided was apparently disregarded, and the E-Board put weak third-place finishers Bailey/Oliver on the ballot for the general election. Of all the candidates to seek the ASUO Executive office in the past few years, Bailey's run was as close to a total failure as any campaign in recent years: despite ASUO connections, visible supporters, ubiquitous posters, and considerable effort, he garnered only 150 more votes than the joke candidacy of Oregon Commentator webmaster Sho Ikeda (and his sock puppet, Mr. Billy). Bailey, a sophomore, might have been well-advised to wait another year before making the attempt; the risky move this year cost him another run for his Student Senate job, which he might well have won.

More interesting: contrary to Elections rules, the E-Board failed to allow either the candidates or student media access to the tabulation; Rice bailed on the Thursday night meeting more than an hour before results were posted; and only Ken Best bothered to stick around long enough to answer questions about the E-Board's grievance rulings.

Despite (or perhaps because of) the four-day voting period, and despite (or perhaps because of) the Duckweb voting arrangement, voter turnout hovered around the same high-single to low-double digit margin as always. Though the ASUO pays lip service to the virtue of increasing voter turnout year in and out, the fact remains that it is not necessarily in the interest of ASUO insiders to expand the voting base - their constituency already votes with regularity. MCC and OSPIRG, two ASUO mainstays with ballot measures pending and whose visibility outside of the EMU Ground Floor East is more or less nil, have nothing to gain by getting more of the students who unknowingly fund their narcissistic programs to turn out for the elections. That Jacobson/Cook polled as well as they did without a substantial increase in voter turnout is no small miracle of its own.

"ASUO Election postponed by Court"
(Mar. 05, 2001)

Things started to get more interesting when the Constitution Court first enjoined the election on the Sunday night before the general election was to begin, something that has not happened at least since David Letterman was a local TV weatherman. On the well-founded notion that Bret Jacobson and Matt Cook could not get a fair hearing if the general election had been already voted on, the Court made their stunning decision. Jacobson, Cook and campaign manager Eric Pfeiffer contended that not only had they broken no rules, but that the E-Board had denied them due process, delegitimizing their decision.

As for the prolonged timeline, elections cannot be held during dead week, finals week, or spring break, and so as the term neared conclusion, the election was necessarily postponed until after the next term.

"OSPIRG, MCC election is set for this week"
(Mar. 06, 2001)

Mere hours after the ConCourt enjoined the election, ASUO Accounting Coordinator Jennifer Creighton notified Chief Justice Robert Raschio via email that the April 1 deadline, by which time a recommendation for next year's incidental fee must be made to University President Dave Frohnmayer, would elapse by end of break, and... if you cannot complete that sentence, then it isn't worth the trouble to recite. (If you can, then perhaps you should stick your wonkish head out of the ASUO Kremlin and get some sunlight.)

Long story short, the ballot measures were headed to the ballot all by their lonesome while the candidates sat on their hands through spring break. Instead of a four day Monday-Thursday voting period, the "regular" elections were scheduled for Wednesday-Friday, with little publicity and almost no prior notice. Given the lack of Executive candidates and the confused schedule, the short money was already on the lowest voter turnout for any ASUO election to date.

Just two days later, all bets were off.

"Court halts election for the second time"
(Mar. 08, 2001)

If the first injunction was unexpected, and the abrupt reshuffle was unprecedented, then the second injunction, reversing the election's status for a third time, can only be described as unbelievable. Based on a grievance against the Multicultural Center's ballot measure filed by Mary Elizabeth Madden and four other Student Senators (full disclosure: including Skye Tenney, this magazine's publisher), Justice Alan Tauber enjoined the election for (possibly) the last time, causing: ASUO Executive Jay Breslow to file a last-minute appeal; public criticism of Tauber by Chief Justice Raschio; and at least one OSPIRG member to break into tears.

Tauber's enjoinder of the OSPIRG ballot measure has been controversial in many ASUO circles, being that the constitutionality of their measure was never in question once approved for the ballot. However, the sending of but a single group to the ballot - a controversial group, no doubt, but a single group nonetheless - would have ensured a voter turnout in the low single digits.

Madden's argument may well carry some weight before the court. The MCC planned to use the additional money from its ballot measure to dispense money to other groups at their discretion, something that the ASUO Student Senate is already recognized to do by the Clark Document and ASUO Constitution. Secondly, the grievance is the first at the UO to consider the Supreme Court's 2000 Wisconsin v. Southworth ruling. How the ConCourt applies the "viewpoint neutral" test set up by the high court should be interesting, to say the least.

Whatever the outcome, the past year has been a politically successful one for the MCC. With former coordinator Breslow in the highest elected office in student government and a near-sweep of next year's Student Senate all but locked up, look for their coffers to swell, and for the ethnic groups under their umbrella to receive special request after special without argument.

"Brooklyn, Nair face injunction"
(Mar. 12, 2001)

Joining the previously mentioned controversies are new grievances against the Elections Board and Executive front-runners Nilda Brooklyn and Joy Nair, guaranteeing that the bars will long be closed before the Court adjourns on the evening of oral arguments.

Brooklyn and Nair are accused by College Republican Jarrett White (who last term unsuccessfully sought Breslow's recall) of using the ASUO office to make campaign phone calls, a strict no-no according to the Election rules. Other allegations, including rumors that Brooklyn and Nair distributed flyers to University Housing's Spencer View apartments, and that the two promised jobs in their administration even before voting began, have not yet resulted in formal grievances. Still, no candidate's integrity will emerge from this ordeal unbesmirched.

As of press time, oral arguments before the Constitution Court have not yet been held, but already the focus is on the ConCourt's next move. Complicating the situation is the resignation of Justice Richard Jameson, who called the body a "kangaroo court" in the March 12 Emerald.

Predicting the behavior of the ConCourt is a foolhardy pastime, but decisions in recent years would indicate that the Court might return Jacobson/Cook to the ballot. If the Court agrees that grievances of equal weight have been filed against each candidate, they may defer to the electorate, who had already chosen Jacobson and Brooklyn for the runoff. On the off-chance that both candidates are disqualified, however, that could send Eric Bailey and Jeff Oliver to the ballot vs. the Sho Ikeda and Mr. Billy. The possibility that Ikeda, whose sole purpose in running was to make a complete and total mockery of the election, could be next year's ASUO Executive cannot be discounted.

How would that be for an unexpected, unprecedented, unbelievable debacle of epic proportions?

Which brings us up to the present: in the final days of Winter Term 2001, the only thing that anyone could possibly be expected to agree on is that no matter what the outcome of this election may be, the victor will be seen as illegitimate. Now, where have we heard that before?