A recent College Democrats rule change requiring students to have attended at least one meeting in order to vote to endorse District 8 alder candidates caused students to turn away from the ballots Jan. 23.
Although all the correct procedures required to officially change the rule were followed, this does not quiet the allegations that the timing of this rule was changed to benefit UW-Madison student and alder candidate Eli Judge, who won the endorsement.
""This rule change came immediately after Eli Judge turned in his nomination papers, it was clearly motivated by that,"" Dane County Supervisor Ashok Kumar said. ""If you look at the College Democrats, there are various people who are actually working actively on Eli Judge's campaign.""
Kumar maintained the decision was racially charged and that many minority students and supporters of UW-Madison student and alder candidate Lauren Woods were turned away.
This calls into question the issue of whether the College Democrats' Executive Board knew the rule change would favor one candidate over another.
""They know who would support Judge and who would support Woods just based on the networks and people they had worked with in the past,"" Associated Students of Madison member Stephanie Biese said.
Biese said this networking, combined with the fact that Woods had not previously worked with the College Democrats and had supporters turned away, cleared the path for Judge to easily win the endorsement.
College Democrats Chair and UW-Madison junior Elijiah Lewien said he believes these allegations are merely efforts to distract voters from the issues at hand.
""Eli Judge is a strong candidate in this race and the other camp is just trying to switch the argument away from the fact that Eli Judge is the stronger candidate, and they don't want to talk about the issues,"" Lewien said.
When asked what prompted the voter-eligibility rule change, Lewien refused to comment. Lewien said he believes Judge is simply the best candidate and that is why he won the endorsement.
Woods said she was surprised the rule change occurred so closely following the announcement of the candidates. She also said she believes that bylaws or a constitution should be created in order to prevent this type of confusion in the future.
""I don't think this was a malicious act against me. I just think it was a decision [the executive board] should have implemented at the beginning of the academic year,"" Woods said. ""I think they can learn a lesson from all of this about the best practice of organizing and implementing rules. None of this would have happened had there been bylaws.""
Woods also believes the situation would have caused less confusion had the Executive Board informed the College Democrats members about the execution of the rule change and how it would affect voter eligibility beforehand.
