Five campaign violations have been filed against Student Association presidential candidate Kyle Boyer, alleging that Boyer failed to report three items on his expenditure report.
Currently, the Joint Elections Committee-an independent body that oversees the SA elections-has not yet determined probable cause for the alleged violations, nor have the complaints been formally investigated. If found to be true, however, Boyer could potentially be removed from the ballot. If Boyer is removed from the ballot less than 24 hours before the runoff election would take place, presidential candidate Julie Bindelglass would become the next SA president by default.
Candidates running for SA president and executive vice president are allowed to spend up to $1,000 during the election season on their campaign and must report all expenditures to the JEC. The five alleged violations filed by Wylie Ballinger, a senior who is not a member of the SA nor an active participant in the election, claim that Boyer did not report expenditures for a car he parked on H St., a parking ticket placed on the car or the use of Facebook ad space.
Boyer released a statement Tuesday afternoon, apologizing for not reporting the use of Facebook ads.
“On Friday when my team and I filed our financial form we neglected to include the price of our Facebook ads which as the Facbeook ‘ad page’ shows total $75.08,” Boyer wrote. “Discovering this error on our own, and wanting our form to be accurate, we emailed the JEC Saturday night and requested that the JEC work with us to fix it. The facebook ads were seen by thousands of people, and it thus would have been a hard sell to intentionally hide from the JEC. We identified the error, and in good faith sought to correct it as soon as possible.”
He added that the use of the car on H St. should not be factored into his overall budget.
“Because that car belongs to a GW student and is always parked on campus, we interpreted the rules to not include this private property as an expenditure, and did not put it down,” Boyer wrote in the email statement. “The service of the car was essentially, a place to stand on top of, and private property to display posters. The car is always parked on campus, often receives parking tickets, and would have been parked near a meter displaying posters regardless of whether it was election time or not, just like the dorm doors or windows with posters on them, and the backbacks adorned with stickers.”
Currently, without the addition of the Facebook ads, Boyer’s total campaign expenditures fall at $809.57. If the Facebook ads, parking ticket, and fair-market value for the use of the car on H St. are added in, Boyer said his campaign expenditures would not surpass the $1,000 limit.
The JEC will decide whether or not to pursue the charges against Boyer before the runoff elections take place March 11 and 12.
