Twelve losing candidates and one winner in Wednesday's undergraduate student government election are contesting the results on a variety of grounds.
Thirteen contest of election forms were turned in to the Associated Students of UNM election commission Thursday. The commission will hold several hearings before making a final decision regarding punishments by 5 p.m. Monday.
All members of the Campus Unity slate, with the exception of Josh Adkins, contested the election on seven incidents involving other slates they say broke campaign regulations as set forth in the ASUNM Lawbook.
The two prominent accusations are that The Connection broke campaign laws by passing out fliers in the student residence halls, known as "dorm storming," and by removing copies of the Daily Lobo awaiting delivery, stuffing them with Connection fliers and distributing them to newspaper boxes.
Campus Unity members also cited a handful of other infractions by both The Connection and B.U.S.Y. slates, among them candidate absence from mandatory election commission meetings and violation of campaigning area rules.
No Campus Unity members were elected.
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Campus Unity member Sen. Tim Serna said the group contested the election on principle.
"We contested the first election we ran in last year that all six of our people won," he said. "It's the same thing now. There were things wrong in this election and we want to make sure our commission does what it needs to do and what it said it would do."
Members of the B.U.S.Y. slate, with the exception of Brian Lucero, contested the election on the same two main principles as Campus Unity - "dorm storming" and the Daily Lobo incident.
Connection member Sen. Evan Kist said he had no comment on the contestants' claims. In a letter delivered Thursday to the Daily Lobo, the members of the Connection slate apologized for the flier incident, but said they did not believe they had violated any rules.
B.U.S.Y. member Lisa Marie G¢mez said earlier in the afternoon that she would contest the election if the Connection did not include the cost of advertising in the Daily Lobo on its expense report. According to The Connection's expense report, they claimed expenses of $99.17, which did not include the market cost of the flier insertion in the newspaper.
Daily Lobo Advertising Manager Valerie Medina has said that similar advertising preprinted and inserted in the paper would have cost a minimum of $350. According to the elections code in the Lawbook, slates are not allowed to exceed $100 in campaign expenses.
The B.U.S.Y. slate reported $97.44, while the Campus Unity slate claimed $99 in campaign expenditures.
Section Two of the ASUNM Lawbook Article XI lists the rules for campaign spending. Among other things, it says that any campaign effort will be assessed a fair market value by the Elections Commission, and that value will be included as a part of the expenditures of a candidate.
During a meeting of the Elections Commission held Thursday to begin assessing the slates' claims, the commission assigned a fair market price to the advertisements of $87.50 - based on a rate of $70 per 1,000 copies.
Commission members counted 1,252 copies of the Daily Lobo Thursday that had been pulled from the delivery bins with the fliers.
Election Commission chairman Danny Milo said that if the commission came to the conclusion that candidates did, in fact, break election code, they would be punished according to sanctions laid out in the Lawbook. According to Lawbook Article XVII, the punishments for violations of election code range from fines to disqualification from assuming office.
