Election results for the University of Maryland’s SGA are delayed until further notice due to the elections commission still reviewing appeals.
Voting for the SGA’s legislature for the 2023-24 academic year closed Wednesday at 4 p.m., but the organization’s governance board and elections commission have not finished reviewing appeals submitted to the organization, according to Emma Selvin, a sophomore psychology and government and politics major who is the chief justice of the SGA’s governance board.
According to Selvin, appeals are reviewed by the elections commission and then the governance board, where a final decision is made. The governance board could vote to have a hearing on some appeals, which would further delay results.
“People were allowed to submit appeals to the elections commission, up until the end of the voting period yesterday,” Selvin said. “The elections commission has to take their time with going through all petitions that they receive and making decisions on those.”
Past appeals have dealt with ineligibility of candidates and issues with deadline extensions.
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According to Colby DeMelfi, a junior philosophy major and the head of election commissions, many of the current appeals are related to the interpretation of specific election rules. He also said the eligibility of some candidates has been disputed, although both DeMelfi and Selvin said no candidates have been deemed ineligible since voting started.
In order to be deemed eligible to run, candidates must be in good financial and academic standing with this university, cannot campaign in bad faith and must not violate any university rules.
Incumbents who are running must have attended 80 percent of the legislative meetings and 80 percent of the secondary and primary committee meetings. Incumbents who served as legislators must have also sponsored at least one piece of legislation per semester or have worked on a long-term project.
Selvin said she is not sure how many more appeals the governance board has to go through before results are announced.
While DeMelfi said he could not provide a specific time frame, he believes election results could be released by the end of this weekend.