Whoever was behind the fraud in Weber State University's online election last spring apparently wanted to elect candidates outside the campus mainstream.
Write-in student body president candidate Andrew Shafer and controversial candidate John Allen Shaw would have won their respective races had officials not discovered fraud, according to vote tallies released by the Ogden university.In the voided election, Shafer received 756 votes compared to 748 for Dee Hansen, the eventual presidential winner.
After a new paper-ballot election, Hansen, a former LDS Student Association president, was elected with 683 votes. Shafer came in third with 63 votes.
The university's student newspaper, The Signpost, reported that before his failed bid in a primary election Shafer said he felt like a glass wall insulated the university's student government from people with different ideas and backgrounds. He said non-LDS students, ethnic groups and liberal thinkers ought to be considered for office.
"I want to see people not being shut out," Shafer was quoted as saying.
Rochele Barker, a former leader of the LDS sorority, was elected executive vice president and Mike Chertudi, who is also LDS, was elected academic vice president.
Shaw ran against Chertudi for academic vice president despite being arrested earlier in the year for charges of two counts of hazing, a Class B misdemeanor, and resigning his seat as black students' senator. The charge has since been lowered to disorderly conduct, a Class C misdemeanor. In the voided election Shaw had 1,234 votes to Chertudi's 773. In the official election, Shaw received 547 votes and Chertudi received 740.
In the online voting for executive vice president, T.R. Khan, who is also black, came much closer to Barker's vote tally, 980 to 1,004. In the official election, the vote was 319 to 945. Khan had often challenged the way student government was run.
The election, still under investigation, was the first conducted online at Weber State. Investigators are examining whether a law or university policy was violated when hundreds of Social Security numbers were misused to cast ballots on the school's computer system.
No charges have been brought in the case, which remains under wraps. Second District Judge Michael J. Glasmann has issued a secrecy order surrounding the investigation. A spokeswoman for the attorney general said her office could not comment on the status of an ongoing investigation.
The university had fought to keep the vote tallies of the fraudulent election secret when Leo Dirr, a reporter for The Signpost, appealed the information's protected status under Utah's Government Records Access and Management Act.
The State Records Committee ordered the release of the records on June 9 after university officials wouldn't say why the records would impede their investigation of voting fraud. The university waited its full 30 days to respond, finally deciding it didn't want to appeal the committee's decision to district court.