Campus, News

Acevedo disqualified, runoff candidates announced

The Associated Students, Inc. Board of Elections announced Marvin Flores and Robert Espinosa will face off in the ASI presidential runoff election next week.

The announcement came after the ASI Judiciary ruled in favor of the Board of Elections, officially disqualifying Oscar Acevedo Tuesday morning.

Acevedo, who would have been in second place with 1,066 votes, had appealed the March 23 disqualification after Flores, a current ASI senator-at-large, filed a complaint on March 22 against Acevedo for his campaigning techniques.


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Flores came out in the lead with 1,636 votes and Espinosa in third by a large margin or 743 votes. Since none of the candidates had a majority of the votes, a runoff was necessitated.

The Board of Elections originally disqualified Acevedo for “a second major violation and potential skewing of an election based on the coercion.”

The meeting minutes from March 24 state that Vrinda Bhuta received an email from a student who requested her vote for Acevedo not be counted. The email said the voter felt forced to vote for Acevedo and his running mate.

Bhuta said she had a witness who saw Acevedo and his campaign workers instructing people on how to vote on their phones and where they could find his name on the ballot.

The runoff elections will take place from April 25-27. Students can vote by following the link sent to their email by ASI.

Michaela Kwoka-Coleman also contributed to this story.

This story has been updated to indicate the specific reason Acevedo was disqualified from the March 24 Board of Elections minutes.

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