Allegations linger over electoral impropriety
Students overwhelmingly approved a Living Wage Referendum in Tuesday's Associated Students of Madison elections, while a Wisconsin Union Referendum was turned down by an almost 700-vote margin.
The Living Wage referendum, sponsored by the Student Labor Action Coalition, which passed amid allegations of campaign impropriety, will create a minimum wage of $10.23 an hour for employees at the Unions, University Health Services and Recreational Sports. The Wisconsin Union Facilities Improvement Plan, which proposed renovations to the union buildings was sponsored by the Wisconsin Union Directorate.
Voters and WUD members accused members of SLAC, who came out against WUFIP, of partaking in unfair campaign practices and impersonating ASM election officials, according to Student Elections Commissions Chair Tim Leonard.
One complainant, whose name was withheld, said Dane County Board-elect, SLAC member and UW-Madison junior Ashok Kumar tried to influence voters at the polls. WUD members said they believed SLAC member Joel Feingold wrote ‘no' over ‘yes' on WUD sidewalk chalkings reading, Vote yes for WUFIP.\
""This is a classic tactic by people who have clearly lost the WUFIP initiative, and are now trying to introduce something after the fact to disenfranchise voters, and trying to win something when clearly students aren't for it,"" Kumar said. ""This is expected, and there's absolutely no truth to it.""
Feingold similarly dismissed the allegations as ""sour grapes.""
In response to the claims of defacing sidewalk chalkings, said, ""To my knowledge, I never saw anyone do that. If they did, that's certainly unfortunate, but I don't know that that would cause to reverse a 700-vote victory.""
Feingold said that SLAC did try to influence respondents during a poll in Gordon Commons, but that they made it perfectly clear that they were not ASM officials and made sure that what they were doing was legal.
In a SEC statement Leonard announced, ""The Student Election Commission will investigate all allegations of campaign impropriety and act accordingly.""
The election results will become official in five days, but Leonard said that if official complaints are filed before or after this deadline, it is possible the results could be overturned.
The election had already come under controversy when technical difficulties caused its postponement last week.
UW-Madison junior Shayna Hetzel of the Wisconsin Union Directorate expressed disappointment over the failure of WUFIP, which would have worked to restore Memorial Union and build a sustainable ""Green"" union in place of Union South.
""We really feel that it's unfortunate because we weren't able to combat some of the misconceptions that have been proliferating throughout campus during the past few weeks,"" Hetzel said.
The final results were 3,959 votes for WUFIP and 4,654 against, according to the ASM website. The Living Wage proposal passed with 5,312 for and 3,204 against. Total student-voter turnout was 22.4 percent.
Hetzel said that these misconceptions included beliefs that the plan would happen either way, that money would be used for research facilities and parking lots and that the $96 per semester raise would increase.\
