After several problems in the elections for the Student Government Association, James Abanaka, marketing freshman, was named president of the College of Business Administration.

The third primary for that position was held on March 27 and 28, the same week the second election was held.

Due to the short notice and lack of publicity for the third election, many students were not aware of it.

“There was one sign in the lobby and they asked if [business students] had already voted,” said Randy Reid, marketing senior and candidate for president of the College of Business.

According to Reid, it was more convenient for the SGA to hold the third run-off at the end of the week so it could swear in the new president and vice-president on Tuesday.

Nathan Gaudet, chief justice of the Court of Review, disagreed, saying that the election was not held at that time for the convenience of court. Gaudet is a political science and history senior.

“It was held Thursday and Friday because we wanted to make sure it got in before the deadline, the last day an election can be held, April 1, 2003,” he said. “We just wanted to make sure they were all sworn in before the deadline.”

The first election took place in front of the Danna Center March 17 and 18 where students voted using the election booths supplied by the Louisiana State Board of Elections.

The first problem occurred with the election booths. Each college was supposed to have its own machine for that school’s students. Instead, SGA got three machines that all had the same ballot names.

“It was a miscommunication,” said Leigh Thorpe, commissioner of elections and communications senior.

Thorpe said she had sent in a list to the state board of elections detailing all the information for each candidate.

That caused a second problem.

There were 51 more votes according to the machines than there were signatures for the College of Business – students who were not supposed to vote for the College of Business did.

“There was some kind of confusion with the election booth, and people didn’t know what college to vote for,” said Gaudet.

Due to the confusion, SGA decided to have another primary for the two candidates running for president of the College of Business, Reid and Abanaka.

“After they (SGA) explained to me what happened, I understood. They were just tying to get the fairest win,” said Abanaka.

SGA members who watched the election booth said they were unsure whether to allow graduate students to vote or not during the first election.

The problem was fixed in the later part of Monday, after a number of graduate students had already been turned away.

The second primary was held March 24 and 25. Students who returned to vote signed in a different column in the same signature book used for the first election. At the end there were 12 more ballots than signatures in the run-off column.

“What probably happened was that some students signed in the election column that was from the first election instead of the second column, labeled ‘runoffs,'” said Thorpe.

For the third primary, the Court of Review ran the table.

“People couldn’t miss their classes any more, and I couldn’t either,” said Thorpe.

Another argument that affected the election was the referendum that passed earlier this semester.

The referendum included changes affecting the entire SGA, the election process, the booking system, and the defining of the impeachment procedure.

Some argued that it had not been clearly announced and many students were not aware of what was going on.

“They had the votes for the new referenda, but everyone on campus was uninformed about it,” Reid said. “There was a box out there to vote, but no list to record who had voted. Anybody could have gone up there and voted five times.”

“We sent some campus e-mails and a banner out in front of Dana Center. We can’t force people to vote, and we didn’t get any complaints afterward,” said Gaudet.

Congress and the rest of SGA accepted the approval of the new constitution.

Reid said that the election reflected very poorly on SGA.

“It’s worse than Florida,” he said. “Miller should have big sign that says ‘Florida.'”