The Ducks Like You campaign filed back-to-back grievances against the Mighty Oregon campaign on Thursday. The first grievance states that Mighty Oregon was allegedly trading Mighty Oregon merchandise for voting signatures, and the second grievance said that Mighty Oregon senatorial candidate Emily Wu wrote “Vote for Emily Wu” and “Vote Emily Wu for Senate Seat 12 on Duckweb” on the chalkboard in Friendly rooms 106 and 206.
The grievance regarding the trade of a T-shirt for a signature violates Elections Rules 9.8, 7.13.2, 9.8.1, and 6.1.
The rules state that campaigns are allowed to distribute items such as T-shirts, but they cannot be exchanged with the expectation of receiving a vote in return.
Samantha Cohen, a candidate for Ducks Like You, wrote in the grievance that Tuesday, April 15, she overheard Mighty Oregon member Alex Titus say to a person, “If you sign this, we’ll give you a T-shirt.”
“I have reason to suspect that Alex Titus was implicitly giving out materials in exchange for vote pledges, and these pledges would be used to contact the people who signed,” Cohen wrote in the grievance.
Along with Cohen, Ducks Like You members Jaki Salgado and Diana Salazar gave testimonies, as well as Daniel Espino, who is not involved in the Ducks Like You campaign, according to the grievance.
“I was on my computer when I overheard an interaction between Taylor Allison and a group of folks who approached their table,” Salgado wrote in her statement. “She asked, ‘Hey would you like a shirt?’ Before handing the shirt she gave them a paper asking them to ‘just sign this.’ I looked over while the two folks signed the petition.”
Slazar and Espino’s statements were similar to Cohen’s and Salgado’s, except their statements deal with the exchanges of sunglasses instead of T-shirts.
“After hearing about the first incident, we didn’t do anything, but after all of the other incidents we decided to go forward with writing a grievance,” Ducks Like You campaign advisor Lamar Wise said. “It was clearly something that wasn’t going away anytime soon.”
“Once again, Ducks Like You has misinterpreted actions of our campaign, much like they did with the LTD contract,” Titus said. “The cards the students filled out were for volunteer sign up and had nothing to do with vote pledging.”
Mighty Oregon campaign advisor Evan Roth also explained that the cards were for volunteer sign ups, and not vote pledging.
In regards to the grievance against Wu, Wu admitted that she wrote on the chalkboards in Friendly 106 and 206.
“I was the one who wrote the campaign material on the chalkboards. No one else on the campaign, or the campaign itself is responsible for it,” Wu wrote in her statement. “The campaign had no prior knowledge of it, the campaigning was all my own. I sincerely apologize for breaking the ASUO elections rules, I was under the impression that it wasn’t a violation of the rules.”
In both cases, Ducks Like You is requesting for the Mighty Oregon campaign to be banned from campaigning on Friday, which is the last day of the primary elections. Elections end at 4 p.m. April 18.
Ducks Like You’s grievance against Mighty Oregon’s Emily Wu.