Today’s scheduled runoff vote for the Student Association president and vice president for finance positions was canceled early this morning because the SA judicial board found, after a grievance was filed, that votes in Dickinson College were recorded improperly during last week’s general election.

Dickinson will tentatively re-vote on all candidates from 1:30 to 7:30 p.m. next Wednesday and Thursday, March 31 and April 1, pending Assembly approval of the times.

Any runoffs, which are held for the top two vote-getters in races where no candidate received the 40 percent of votes required to win a race outright, would be tentatively held after spring break, on April 21.

In an emergency meeting that ended around 12:30 this morning, the j-board determined that Dickinson’s 256 votes were invalid because they did not have voters “affix their signature next to their name on the voting roster” as is prescribed in the SA bylaws. Pollsitters crossed off the names of voters instead.

The elections committee met after that, breaking up around 2 a.m. after determining procedures and dates for the re-run.

Joe Bansgopaul, an executive vice presidential candidate, filed the grievance on Monday afternoon.

“The bottom line is that without the signature next to the ballot, there is no way to determine accountability for the votes,” Bansgopaul wrote in the grievance.

Bansgopaul filed his grievance around 5 p.m. yesterday in the SA office, after j-board chair Jonathan Cogan had already checked the grievances box for the day. Cogan did not find out about the grievance until the middle of Monday night’s Assembly meeting, which began at 7 p.m.

During the Assembly meeting, elections chair Mary Leonardo presented the elections results verbally and in print. Leonardo did not mention any voting problems in the written report, addressing them only after other representatives questioned it.

Twenty-five of 41 voting Assembly members passed the elections results, but not without contention that sometimes deteriorated into personal attacks. The Assembly’s approval meant the runoff, despite the grievance, was still to be held today — before a decision on the validity of Dickinson’s votes had been made.

To avoid a scenario where the runoff didn’t count, SA President Matt Landau said he called Cogan around 10 p.m. and asked him to hear the grievance before the runoff was held. The j-board convened shortly after, meeting quorum with six of nine members.

Three other grievances pertaining to this year’s election, all filed by vice president for academic affairs candidate Shaun Hiller, are still to be reviewed by the j-board, but a meeting time to review the grievances has not yet been set. According to Cogan, the j-board discussed only Bansgopaul’s grievance last night into this morning because it was the only matter with a pressing time constraint.

Hiller’s grievances separately accuse the winning VPAA candidate Daniel Rabinowitz of improper postering; that Leonardo acted improperly by supporting at least one candidate on Facebook, but not all; and that a person other than a member of the elections committee handled a ballot box.

All three grievances could result in a re-vote, according to Hiller. According to Leonardo, whom two of the grievances are filed against, the committee is not going to wait to see the outcome of the grievances.

Hiller said after the j-board issued its decision that he was considering withdrawing the latter two grievances. Hiller and Bansgopaul finished third in their respective races and were closest to making the runoff ballot of losing candidates who did not.

Those in opposition to a re-vote, such as Leonardo and Landau, said they felt no fraud had occurred. They also felt that if more voters turn out in Dickinson than before, or if candidates campaign harder, Dickinson could disproportionately affect the outcome of the election.

Those in support of the re-vote, such as current Vice President for Multicultural Affiars Maryam Belly and Jeremy Vogt, a Dickinson Assembly rep, felt the results as they stood could not be trusted and that the bylaws needed to be followed exactly as written.