After failing to complete required duties on time, Nicholas Davis, Government of the Student Body election commissioner, resigned before his second impeachment trial.

Davis, junior in political science, announced his resignation as GSB election commissioner through an e-mail sent to Luke Roling, GSB president and senior in chemical engineering, Jan. 10. This was done before Davis’s second scheduled impeachment trial Jan. 12.

“I resigned because I didn’t want to go through another impeachment process and I felt that, given the first trial, I wouldn’t be afforded the same objective and lenient discourse,” Davis said.

Davis was first put up for impeachment Dec. 12, 2010, after failing to complete the 2010-2011 apportionment bill. Roling said this bill is similar to a census for the GSB and indicates how many representatives each area GSB can have.

“It’s an extremely important document to have in place,” Roling said.

Davis cited personal reasons for not meeting his responsibilities.

“My grandmother passed away and [I] was in and out of Ames during the couple weeks leading up to the deadline,” Davis said.

At the impeachment trial, a vote of 22-2-1 allowed Davis a second chance at fulfilling his duties as election commissioner. Roling said an affirmative vote of 23 senators was needed to impeach Davis.

When Davis had yet to complete his duties at the beginning of the spring semester, the senate once again put him up for impeachment. Roling said Davis was charged with the following:

• Failure to appoint a vice commissioner, as required by the GSB bylaws

• Failure to appoint a commission recorder, as required by the GSB bylaws

• Failure by election commission to publicly announce an election timeline by the end of the fall semester

• Malfeasance of duty by Nicholas Davis for misrepresenting himself during the first impeachment trial. The charges stated that he claimed to have apportionment completed at this trial, when in fact the apportionment bill was not completed until several days after the trial took place. “I personally made quite a few changes to the apportionment document submitted to me in time for it to be passed next week,” Roling said.

Roling said the GSB rules committee approved the charges by a vote of 3-2 for the first two charges and 5-0 for the final two charges. From there, the charges would have been sent to the senate, who would decide if a trial should be held, had Davis not resigned.

MaryBeth Konkowski, election commission member, has been nominated by Roling to take Davis’s place. The senate will decide whether to confirm this nomination at their meeting Jan. 19.

Roling said Konkowski has been working on an interim basis since Davis’s resignation to help with candidate seminars.

“MaryBeth has done a spectacular job of filling in gaps and getting things moving and I’ve been very impressed with the response from the election commission as a whole to stepping up and getting things done. I’m very confident in her leadership moving forward,” Roling said.