Members from the unofficial ASU chapter of the Arizona Public Interest Research Group, or PIRG, are calling for the dismissal of last week’s election results, which denied the group funding.
The measure asked students whether they supported a $1.50 per-student, per-semester refundable fee, which would help fund the group. The measure was defeated at each campus where it appeared on the student government election ballot — Tempe (3,500-2,710), Polytechnic (302-230) and Downtown (370-364).
Among other concerns, ASU PIRG supporters believe the language on the ballots did not appear in the format as requested. PIRG has filed protests with each campus’s elections committee.
“We issued a formal complaint [at Tempe] that it was not an accurate representation of the initiative petitions,” said Jason Donofrio, chair of ASU PIRG.
The PIRG measure was put on the ballot at the Tempe campus through an initiative process.
The main problem with the ballot measure on the Tempe campus was that the question about the $1.50 fee and information on Arizona PIRG appeared in a link and not on the actual ballot page, Donofrio said. The ballots at each campus were formatted to have a link beside each candidate, explaining their platform, and the PIRG measure followed this format.
PIRG first attempted to get a measure on the Tempe election ballot this semester through a referendum, but the attempt failed after Undergraduate Student Government President Brendan O’Kelly vetoed two bills on the referendum’s language.
Donofrio said the main reason why PIRG decided to conduct a petition instead of pursuing a referendum was to bypass the link. He said Senate members told PIRG that if the group ran an initiative process, there would not be a link, and the language on the ballot would be of their choosing.
In the debate with the Tempe Senate, Donofrio said PIRG’s “whole argument was, ‘Well, not every student checks the link.’”
Downtown Election Committee Chair Olga Lykhvar said links appeared not only for the PIRG measure, but for candidates also.
“That’s the way that the system is set up,” Lykhvar said.
PIRG supporters have also expressed concern over the ballot computer system crashing at least a few times during the elections, and questioned why there was not an extension of the voting time period.
“It was uniformly damaging to all candidates,” said Scott Tippett, elections director for the Tempe campus.
Another concern of ASU PIRG members was the casting of double votes. Students enrolled at two or more of the campuses could have voted on the PIRG measure more than once.
“This violates a key premise of democracy which is one person, one vote,” said a letter from the Students for Arizona PIRG to the Downtown Election Committee.
Tippett disagreed with this argument.
“Mr. Donofrio knew from the beginning that those are five separate sovereign [government] bodies,” Tippett said, referring to the different to the ASU student governments.
The Downtown and Polytechnic election committees are in the process of reviewing the complaints.
The Tempe elections department has dismissed the complaint for not being properly filed and has advised PIRG members to bring their arguments before the ASASU Supreme Court.
Tippett said the complaint filed did not specify which election bylaw had been broken, and it had listed Tippet himself as the defendant in the complaint, which makes the case a conflict of interest.
“The ASASU violations process cannot be used in this way,” Tippett said.
Reach the reporter at kjdaly@asu.edu
