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USAC election candidates sanctioned for submitting late expense reports

By Joseph Vescera

Oct. 24, 2014 2:50 a.m.

The undergraduate student government Election Board barred two candidates from fliering on campus for all of Thursday after they did not report their campaign spending totals on time.

Though they spent about $1,700 campaigning in total, transfer student representative candidate Negeen Sadeghi-Movahed and general representative 2 candidate Sofia Moreno Haq reported that they did not spend any money in their original expense reports, which were due Oct. 10, said Undergraduate Students Association Council Election Board Chair Shagun Kabra. Sadeghi-Movahed and Haq are running a joint campaign.

On Thursday, the two candidates reported their total spending to the Election Board, but were sanctioned for not reporting their spending immediately, Kabra said. He added that the candidates were also sanctioned because they submitted their initial expense reports a few hours late.

The sanctions resulted from a misunderstanding of the spending disclosure process in the Election Board code, Sadeghi-Movahed said.

“The issue wasn’t that Sofia and I didn’t want to disclose our spending, but just that we didn’t understand the process of actually doing it,” she said.

According to the USAC Election Code, turning in incorrect or incomplete information in expense reports to the Election Board by the deadline may result in disqualification. The code also specifies that no spending is allowed after the deadline to submit expense reports.

However, Kabra said the candidates were not disqualified because they did submit expense reports, just not by the time given. They also did not update the reports correctly, he said.

He added that the abbreviated election timeline led candidates to have to submit expense reports before on-campus campaigning started, which is unusual in USAC elections.

For violating the original Oct. 10 campaign finance reports deadline, Sadeghi-Movahed and Haq were also sanctioned by the Election Board earlier in the special election. That sanction limited their fliering times on Monday, the day before voting began.

Compiled by Joseph Vescera, Bruin contributor.

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