By Emily Wunderlich and Whitney Elfstrom
When Mariah McQueen decided early this month to run for student body president, she had no running mate and only 48 hours to collect the 100 signatures she needed to qualify.
Panicked, she turned to Student Government’s supervisor of elections, Shannon Scanlon.
According to a GroupMe message on Feb. 6, one day before the signatures were due, Scanlon offered to help.
She wrote that she would tell Dwayne Isaacs, the administration’s director of student life and engagement, that she had received McQueen’s candidate packet on time but forgot to turn it in.
“(I) mean (I) wouldn’t do this for anyone else but you’ve helped me with elections a ton in the past,” Scanlon’s message said. “Try to get it by 5 (p.m.) tomorrow but if not give me your (university) number and I’ll email Dwayne saying I have your packet but didn’t get a chance to give it (to him).”
After asking Samantha Fiore to be her running mate, McQueen began collecting signatures for both herself and Fiore. According to McQueen, she did this to give Fiore time to decide if she wanted to run.
Jonah Goodman, a former SG senator, also collected signatures on behalf of both candidates.
But on Feb. 12, the Elections Rules Commission led by Scanlon ruled that the signatures were “obtained in violation of the (candidate) packet rules,” which say candidates must obtain their own signatures.
The three-member commission unanimously voted to disqualify McQueen and Fiore from the election, one week before the campaign was scheduled to begin.
Now, McQueen is appealing, contending that the elections commission violated its own rules and conducted a “witch hunt” against her.
Her case, which will be heard by SG’s supreme court this afternoon (Feb. 19), has plunged the spring campaign into confusion and controversy as student leaders debate both the legality of their own rules and how the rules commission conducted the Feb. 12 meeting that led to McQueen’s disqualification.
If the supreme court eventually upholds the election commission’s ruling, it apparently would leave only one presidential candidate – Kaeden Kelso, who is running with Ysatis Jordan – on the ballot when students vote between Feb. 26 and March 1.
In that case, the ballot would simply ask voters for their approval or disapproval of said candidate, and Kelso would need one more vote than 50 percent to assume the presidency.
The presidency
The Student Government presidency is a powerful position at USF St. Petersburg.
The president, who makes $10,687 under the 2017-2018 budget, represents the student body before the faculty, administration and Campus Board of Trustees.
The president appoints an executive cabinet and the members of the supreme court and plays a key role in how SG spends its budget.
Slightly more than half of the budget, which comes from the $3.3 million that USF St. Petersburg students pay in activities and service fees, helps fund the University Student Center. The remainder is allocated by SG to itself and other campus organizations.
Two arguments
In appealing the Elections Rules Commission’s decision to disqualify her, McQueen is not citing Scanlon’s written offer to look the other way if she didn’t meet the deadline for submitting signatures.
McQueen said she considered Scanlon’s offer, but then ruled it out.
“I knew when it comes to my own morals that I didn’t want to put her (Scanlon) in that position and I also didn’t want to be in that situation,” McQueen said. “I thought that would be more of an issue than the signatures because I didn’t expect the signatures to ever be a problem.”
“I think this court case is more so deciding what I did (in gathering signatures), whether it was wrong or right,” McQueen said. “I don’t think I should bring in what Shannon said or ‘he said, she said’ stuff. I think we can leave that out of the court case.”
When asked about her written offer to help McQueen, Scanlon first said “that is not true.” Then she said that McQueen had asked the newspaper not to mention the written offer.
However, McQueen told The Crow’s Nest, “Because our relationship is a little better (now)…I probably wouldn’t have said some of the things I said (at first)…,but that doesn’t mean that they weren’t true.”
In her appeal, McQueen is stressing two arguments – first, that the rule on obtaining signatures is not binding and, second, that the elections commission violated its own rules in the meeting where McQueen and Fiore were disqualified.
Ironically, McQueen played a role in the requirement that presidential and vice presidential candidates each must obtain 100 signatures according to the packet rules in order to get on the ballot.
She said she recommended that requirement to Scanlon after learning about it at a student government conference in Washington. The requirement took effect in USF St. Petersburg’s fall 2017 election.
But now McQueen contends the requirement is not binding – and SG’s attorney general, Marion Nuraj, agrees with her.
For a rule to become binding, Nuraj says, it must be approved by the SG senate. But that never happened, he says.
The Feb. 12 meeting
The elections commission has three members: Scanlon, deputy supervisor of elections Ashley Huber and Ashley Swain, the supervisor of senate elections.
When the commission met Feb. 12, both McQueen and Fiore were unable to attend because of scheduling conflicts.
When Nuraj asked the commission to reschedule the meeting to give him time to look at the issue, he was denied.
When asked why the commission did not reschedule so that to McQueen could attend, Scanlon said that everyone on the commission was available after 1 p.m., and she wanted to “get it done.”
Scanlon first said that McQueen told her she had a class at 1 p.m. But then Scanlon said, “I don’t remember what time (McQueen) told me that she had class but I didn’t think to change it.”
According to an SG rule, McQueen was allowed to submit a written statement to be read at the meeting.
McQueen emailed a statement to Scanlon nine minutes before the commission meeting, and then to members of SG at 12:59 to ensure “transparency.”
Scanlon called the meeting to order at 1:01 and used her email to read the three anonymous allegations against McQueen and the email correspondence between herself and McQueen.
When asked later why she didn’t also read McQueen’s statement, Scanlon said she didn’t know she had to.
McQueen also said that she had to ask Scanlon multiple times to send her copies of the allegations, which she did not receive until after the meeting.
According to Nuraj, McQueen could not adequately defend herself against the allegations without seeing them first.
Under SG law, the commission has 24 hours to notify a candidate of a grievance filed against them, and the notification must include the supporting evidence. McQueen said that she was not alerted about the grievances until 27 hours after they were filed.
The commission’s rules of procedure state that “major violations must be reported to the ERC within 24 hours of the offense.” According to Scanlon, the allegations were filed at 4:49 Feb 8, 23 minutes after the cut off.
In another GroupMe exchange with McQueen, Scanlon acknowledged that she was aware “the complaint wasn’t filed within the correct time” for the commission to take action.
When asked why she still proceeded with the case, Scanlon said that student body president David Thompson and vice president Maria Almonte directed her to do so.
“We looked and said that was within the time in which the packet was supposed to be due, so I made that recommendation,” said Thompson.
Both Scanlon and Thompson agreed that the commission has never seen a case dealing with pre-campaign issues, so they were unsure how handle the situation.
“Personally I’ve never experienced something this large within the ERC in my time so I wasn’t too sure how to go about it,” Scanlon said.
Responses
In an email addressed to Scanlon, McQueen accused the commission of violating “their own rules” and stated that she filed a public records request for all documents related to her case from senate president Emilie Morris.
“It is obvious from the reckless rule breaking of the commission, that we will not get any justice in the ERC,” McQueen’s email said.
“The way it was done was very hurtful for the both of us,” Fiore said in a phone interview with The Crow’s Nest. “They didn’t try to make sure we were there, they didn’t want to hear our side before they made any decisions. It was very quickly done, pretty much behind our backs, and then we found out through email, which was a reply-all email, that we were disqualified.”
In the email addressed to Scanlon following the commission’s verdict, McQueen revealed that Jordan, the vice presidential candidate on the opposing ticket, was one of the people who filed a grievance against her.
In a bizarre twist, McQueen and Jordan are roommates.
Nuraj sees this as a conflict of interest, but Scanlon said that whoever files a grievance with the commission is “not my business.”
As supervisor of elections, one of Scanlon’s duties is to “certify candidates and approve their signed paperwork.”
Although the case is now before the supreme court, both McQueen and Scanlon stressed that the matter was one of SG law and not personal.
“SG has done really good things for me in the past, so I just want to make sure that my anger toward some people in Student Government isn’t also ruining their reputations,” McQueen said.
