GSC votes not to certify ASSU election results

The Graduate Student Council (GSC) voted against certifying the 2025 ASSU election results at their Monday meeting. They did not, however, reach the required two-thirds majority vote to call for a new election.

The vote escalates a contentious standoff over alleged misconduct within the election process. Undergraduate Senate (UGS) co-chair Ivy Chen ’26 M.A. ’27 resigned from the UGS last week after she was accused of asking former elections commissioner Christian Figueroa ’27 to “manipulate votes in her favor.” Figueroa stepped down from the elections commission following Chen’s alleged request to manipulate the votes. Chen’s running mate and UGS co-chair, Gordon Allen ’26 withdrew from the election the day before ballots opened.

GSC members weighed these and other possible violations of protocol in the election, including candidates not receiving access to public financing, allegations of voter fraud and the Elections Commission operating in a partisan manner. 

They also examined the practical consequences of not certifying the results. Stanford Student Enterprises Chief Executive Officer Jas Espinosa ’18 M.A. ’19 told the GSC that not certifying the results would “force another election” at the end of the term, regardless of whether the council voted to call for a new election or not.

GSC co-chair Emmit Pert, a fourth-year chemistry Ph.D. student clarified that, if the GSC votes against certifying the election, the current members’ terms will end at the end of spring quarter. If the GSC votes to certify the election, the members’ terms will end two weeks after the certification, Pert said. 

The GSC considered the allegations of voter fraud regarding Chen and Figueroa.

GSC co-treasurer Andy Yin, a third-year Ph.D. student in mathematics, urged the GSC not to “forget about concerns of electoral misconduct.”

“I do not agree with the suggestion that electoral misconduct can be dismissed as grounds for decertification based on the fact that the party that apparently sought to benefit from election misconduct was not on the ballot,” Yin said. “I think we need to know more to be convinced of the integrity of the election.”

GSC co-chair and third-year Ph.D. student in computer science Áron Ricardo Perez-Lopez clarified that there was no current evidence of tampering with votes, but that the allegations were an “appearance issue” for the election’s integrity. 

The GSC also considered low voter turnout. 5.81% of graduate students voted this year, as opposed to 27% last year. 

Acting elections commissioner Gabriela Holzer ’25 shared that the low voter turnout was due, in part, to the Elections Commission operating on “a later timeline.”

“Typically, the Elections Commission is appointed in the year prior to the election. We were appointed in February. There’s a bit of a tighter timeline in terms of organizing election promotion,” Holzer said.

Perez-Lopez voiced concern over a lack of input from the graduate student population should the GSC vote to certify the election. “A student government elected by a very small minority of graduate students will govern the ASSU for the following year, which in my mind is even a bigger issue than potentially not having a government for a couple of weeks,” he said.

Perez-Lopez shared that, because the graduate student mailing list is set to “reject all postings by non-members,” some emails from the Elections Commission did not reach the graduate student population.

“I think one of the bigger concerns for graduate students is that graduate students effectively got no notice of the election beyond their ballot and I believe one initial email that Diego sent at some point earlier this spring,” Perez-Lopez said.

The GSC also sought clarification on the elections committee sending out multiple links to vote in the election.

Holzer told the GSC that the Election Commission sent a second link to the entire student population “since it was early enough in the voting, and [they] wanted to ensure that the fixed survey addressed any concerns across any student populations.”

“We made it very clear in the email that the second link was the one to be used for voting in the election and that the first link would not work if people tried to use it after we had closed it,” Holzer added.

ASSU President Diego Kagurabadza ’25 urged the GSC to consider the “consequences” of voting against certifying the election.

“I will be the first to admit that this election was not conducted in a perfect, ideal manner,” Kagurabadza said. “That said, I think we need to really embrace the gravity of what a decision against certification would mean.”

Pert also voiced apprehensions over the practical consequences of voting against election certification. “My current view is that, as much as there were a bunch of bad things that happened in the election, I’m not convinced any of them actually reached grounds for invalidation,” he said.

Pert finally raised concerns over “an appearance of partisan behavior” from invalidating the election given GSC Faculty Senate Representative Artem Arzyn’s ’26 M.S. ’26 run for ASSU Executive President.

Associate Director of Student Organizations Pete Cerneka encouraged the GSC to “think outside the box” and find a “creative solution” such as “extend[ing] the election a day or two days.”

“There’s a lot of work that people put into this. And it might have been imperfect, but it seems shortsighted to throw all that out if the point is to try and make sure that everyone is enfranchised,” Cerneka said.

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