- Director of Elections has “no idea” what happened to the 454 missing ballots, only has access to same information we do.
- Suggests 454 ballots not counted in the presidential race may be the result of illegal voting, students only ranking the disqualified candidate.
- Office of the Assemblies claims any ballots not counted only ranked the disqualified candidate.
This morning, the Cornell Review conducted an interview with Patrick Mehler, Director of Elections, after he reached out to the Review via Instagram to provide the following statement:
“Firstly, the 454 ballots were all counted, what it means is that, of all the voters, 454 voters did not have their first or second choice win a seat in any of the elections they decided to vote in. Every person’s vote did count, that number just reflects how many people didn’t have a first or second choice win due to the hare voting system. In short, all ballots are counted in the final election result.”
“Secondly, the tallies are conducted as if Zion never ran in the first place; whoever voted for Zion, their second choice was made their first as is standard with hare voting. All voters were included,” he continued.
“Finally, in terms of why Zion was disqualified, that remains confidential. What I can share is there were challenges brought forth, the committee held hearings, reviewed the facts and reached a conclusion; for which the candidate asked for a JCC Review to ensure the committee did not err in its decision. That review took place and the Elections Committee decision to disqualify the challenged candidate was upheld.”
“In short, everyone’s votes were counted and there isn’t a scenario in which another candidate would win as every vote was counted.”
SILVERSTEIN: What is your response to this statement: All voters did not have their votes counted. Voters who only voted for Zion, but did not rank a second or third choice, had their votes discarded. Do you agree with that point?
MEHLER: People who only voted for Zion and selected no 2nd or 3rd choice did not have their vote counted in the presidential race but did in all other races they voted in, for example EVP, College Rep, etc. The way hare voting has worked since Cornell introduced it in the ‘70s is that you can rank or not rank as many candidates in a race as a voter wants; if they choose not to rank any other candidates, they’re saying they would have rather not have voted at all if the other candidate(s) were the only choices. I hope that clarifies it, I knows it’s pretty complicated
SILVERSTEIN: Do you have an exact # for the ballots that ranked Zion and only Zion? Is that the 454 ballots?
MEHLER: I have no idea; I only ever see the numbers that you all see.
SILVERSTEIN: That’s kind of the problem here, no one seems to have an idea.
MEHLER: My educated guess would be the 454 are people who only ranked him and stopped voting but I can’t confirm that in any way; the election rules explicitly say DQ’d candidates will not have their votes ever shown.
SILVERSTEIN: So the story remains accurate, the 454 votes remain uncounted for. I apologize if I sound overly aggressive here, we’re just trying to get to the bottom of this.
MEHLER: Yeah no worries. The ballots are not uncounted for; if they voted in other races or ranked other candidates it’s counted. What’s also feasible is illegal voters.
SILVERSTEIN: Not other races, just in the context of the presidential election.
MEHLER: For example, alumni can’t vote or sign petitions. But they still have netids; those who graduated in the Winter of 2020 couldn’t vote because they’re graduated I believe.
SILVERSTEIN: Has something like that ever happened before? 454 illegal voters in an election with only around 3,000 votes seems very significant.
MEHLER: I don’t know; we did have a decent amount of alumni sign people’s petitions which isn’t allowed.
SILVERSTEIN: Who would know the answers to these questions?
MEHLER: You can ask the Office of the Assembles but I’m almost certain they have the same information I have.
SILVERSTEIN: Someone has to be able to directly account for those 454 ballots that were not counted, seems pretty important
MEHLER: It’s most likely people who voted solely for Zion in this race; he was DQ’d so the ballot is treated as empty.
SILVERSTEIN: Are you okay with us publishing this as well, from your initial comment, it sounded like a total dismissal of our points in the article, but as we get into more detail it becomes evident that it’s much more complex.
MEHLER: I wasn’t trying to dismiss the article my apologies if it came off that way; I was hoping to clarify that it’s not as simple as someone else could have won.
SILVERSTEIN: No problem, I understand. But in theory, based on what we know, someone else could have won, right? We’re not claiming that to be the case, but it was a close election and we can’t know until the 454 ballots are accounted for.
MEHLER: No, someone else could not have won. The ballots are accounted for, they are just deemed invalid which means they did not vote for either first or second place in the final tabulation. Same thing that happened with the trustees; I believe a couple hundred didn’t vote for andrea or Selam so it says they’re invalid in the final tabulation
SILVERSTEIN: Why did this take so long?
MEHLER: What do you mean?
SILVERSTEIN: They released the other election results a long time ago. Now there’s closed door deliberations, a week later one candidate is disqualified, and 454 votes discarded, and no explanation as to why? We don’t know what happened with the 454 votes. You said they could be alumni and now you’re saying they could be people that only voted for Zion.
MEHLER: The election period closed on Friday evening. The Committee held multiple hearings on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday for over a dozen total challenges. I then spent all of of Tuesday writing the reports; the JCCs reviewed everything between Tuesday and yesterday and released the races as challenges were settled.
SILVERSTEIN: So we have a disqualified candidate with no explanation as to why, and 454 disqualified votes with no consistent story as to why.
MEHLER: Disqualifications of candidates are confidential and the votes were not disqualified, they were empty ballots in the final tabulation.
SILVERSTEIN: I appreciate your responsiveness, will include your answers in our article. Again, I apologize if I’m coming off as harsh, it’s just the nature of the positions we occupy and my responsibility to ask these questions.
MEHLER: I understand, no worries. Myself snd the Elections Committee literally spent days worth of hours ensuring we did everything according to the elections rules and followed it to the t.
The Office of Assemblies responded to The Review’s request for comment:
The “empty ballots” would have been those voters who only voted for the disqualified candidate and did not rank other candidates. Essentially, these votes were cast for a candidate no longer on the ballot, they had not included other options for their vote (i.e. did not rank the other candidates), and thus their votes were not used in the count.
This is outlined in the instructions on the ballot:
“Please note that some races are tabulated via Ranked Choice Voting. You may rank as many (or as few) candidates as you want. All votes are counted as long as your candidate remains in the round being tabulated. YOUR VOTE WILL ONLY COUNT IN THE ROUNDS IN WHICH YOUR CANDIDATE REMAINS. You may not vote for the same candidate more than once. Votes are considered ‘exhausted’ (or ‘completed’) when your candidate is eliminated, and you have not ranked other candidates in the round. This clarifies the instructions on the ballot, ‘If you choose not to include a candidate at all it means you would rather have your vote not count than have it count for that candidate.'”
Samuel Kim contributed to this story.
