The Election Supervisory Board unanimously dismissed a complaint filed against the Dimitroff-Guadiana campaign Monday night.
The Election Supervisory Board held a hearing for a complaint filed against the Dimitroff-Guadiana campaign on Monday night. Kiefer Odell, government senior and president emeritus of University Democrats, said he filed a complaint against the Dimitroff-Guadiana campaign because he thought a questionnaire Dimitroff and Guadiana filled out for University Democrats was misleading.
The University Democrats questionnaire provides a list of questions for Student Government candidates, including questions about political participation. University Democrats review candidates’ responses to decide which campaign to endorse. University Democrats received a response from the Dimitroff-Guadiana campaign stating “Kallen [Dimitroff] is a lifelong Democrat who has voted only in Democratic primaries her entire life.” After checking Dimitroff’s voting history, University Democrats found Dimitroff has never voted in a primary.
“We filed the complaint because we think campaigns should be held to a certain standard,” Odell said. “We feel that they should be held accountable. There was every indication that this was a blatant attempt to mislead us. If this was in any way an accident, she should have gotten back to us and let us know that it was misleading.”
Kallen Dimitroff, executive alliance candidate and government senior, said she and her running mate Jesse Guadiana had not seen the actual questionnaire until the complaint had been filed.
“When we were answering the University Democrats questionnaire form, we were not filling out the questionnaire directly — we were responding to a member of our team,” Dimitroff said. “Our team member was transcribing our answers and asked us general questions such as, ‘Which party do you vote for?’ We told him we have always voted for Democrats. In translation, he interpreted that to mean we have already voted for Democrats in the primaries, and we have not voted in the primaries yet.”
Odell said he thinks it is Dimitroff’s responsibility to provide truthful responses.
“As an agent of the campaign, the team member’s words are her words,” Odell said.
Dimitroff said she and Guadiana had no intention to knowingly mislead University Democrats or the campus community.
“We want to apologize because the information is misleading, but it definitely wasn’t malicious,” Dimitroff said. “We want to take any conciliatory measures that University Democrats finds appropriate. Jesse and I haven’t voted yet, but we plan to vote together this week.”
