Leaked Site Spawns Allegations of Premature CCSC Campaigning

A rules violation complaint has marred the kickoff of the campaign for the Columbia College Student Council.

Mark Johnson, the current CCSC junior class vice president and the Fusion party’s candidate for CCSC senior class president, accused rival party Leadership Evolved: My Oh Nine of campaigning prematurely when its Web site was leaked to Bwog Monday night.

Ironically, the unfinished Web site served mainly to inform voters that the “LE:MON” party “decided to minimize our ecological footprint and run a paperless campaign.”

If the party is found guilty, the standard penalty for a first violation is a 10 percent reduction in posters. But Andrew Ness, CC ’08 and chair of the elections board, said that when deciding on a punishment, the board will have to consider the fact that the party has no flyers to lose.

“We haven’t come across this before,” Ness said. “We’ve had parties opt to use less posters, but we’ve never had a party opt to use no posters.”

Johnson said he filed the complaint out of “respect” for the electoral process, and speculated as to whether it was LE:MON’s lack of council experience that led to the alleged infraction.

“Regardless of whether they get posters taken away, even though they don’t have any, everyone in the campaign should be held accountable to the rules,” Johnson said.

Colin Drummond, CC ’09 and head of the LE:MON ticket, called the charge “unfortunate,” but added that he does not believe “it’ll hinder us too much.”

Drummond said he did not know how Bwog gained access to the campaign’s Web site, and added that his party was “working out the kinks” when it was leaked.

“Obviously our intent wasn’t to get a head start on the campaign,” Drummond said, noting that because there was so little content on the site and it was discovered so close to the start of the campaign, “the impact is minimal.”

He said he will file a rebuttal, which is due around 2 p.m. today.

lien.hoang@columbiaspectator.com