Candidates plead not guilty to violations

As more of the Undergraduate Student Government presidential and vice presidential candidates are receiving violations for misplaced fliers, more are claiming that someone is working against them.

Jason Covener, Michael Landsberg and David Lubkemann all pled not guilty to charges of covering other campaigns' posters with their own. However, the court found all three guilty of violating the elections code.

The three all said they have limited resources and hang up most of their fliers on their own or know everyone hanging up their fliers. For these reasons, they argued, someone outside their campaign must have moved the fliers. No one would say who they suspected.

According to the USG Elections Code, candidates may not cover, mutilate or damage another candidate's fliers. Candidates are also responsible for all their own campaign material.

Covener, who was cited for two violations, rebutted the commission's case by pointing out that witnesses to the violations forgot the incident and the fliers were damaged.

"Once again, I assert that if this was covering a campaign flier, then I assert it was moved," he said at the opening of the second hearing.

Because Landsberg and running mate Brent Barbe hang up all their own fliers and are very careful to not cover anything, Landsberg also defended himself by saying someone else must have moved his flier.

"This isn't the kind of thing we certainly want to get into," Landsberg said.

Logistically, Lubkemann's flier could not have covered the other flier which was twice the size of his flier, he said. Witnesses said Lubkemann's flier was not stapled onto the other flier but covered half of it.

Lubkemann suggested someone might have slipped their flier under his.

"I think it's a case of an overzealous worker," he said after his hearing.