The Government of the Student Body is continuing discussions on the election process and what may have gone wrong.

Jonathan Richardson, speaker and senior in chemical engineering, and Jeffrey Rothblum, vice speaker and senior in aerospace engineering, who initiated the impeachment explained no conflict of interest occurred.

Richardson, who brought charges against GSB election commissioner and senior in mechanical engineering Michael Gilbert, said the violations were found after a discrepancy between the timeline and bylaws had allowed more candidates to enter the race.

The biggest problem with the extension of the deadline was that the election commissioner acted alone without the commission.

“It’s very dangerous to allow one person to have the authority to just unilaterally make changes to the proceedings of the election, especially after the senate has voted on how it will be run,” Richardson said.

According to the bylaws, the ballot must be submitted two weeks before the election, Richardson said. There were also several items on the ballot that presented a concern.

“None of the executive tickets should have been on the ballot, technically, because none of them had fulfilled the requirements to be on the ballot according to the bylaws,” he said.

Because the commission had not addressed the issue, the ballot could have been challenged and there was a possibility of the whole election being thrown out by the court, Richardson said.

After conversations with Rothblum and Gilbert, Richardson said it was decided to get on public record about how the issues would be addressed. It is the job of the Senate to address issues concerning violations of the bylaws with its officers.

Richardson, who has endorsed Phillips and Guffy on their election Web site, addressed the accusations of a conflict of interest.

“When that endorsement was made, there was one possible choice for GSB president and vice president,” he said.

Richardson said his endorsement had no effect on his decision to bring up the impeachment charges and to him, the biggest issue was making sure the ballot was correct and no action was taken to reduce the number of tickets.

“The action was taken so that we would have an election that wasn’t invalid,” he said.

Rothblum explained he brought up the charges of impeachment because it is the job of any senator who finds bylaw violations to bring it up. As soon as Rothblum found out about the bylaw infractions, he resigned from the Phillips-Guffy campaign.

“I did what my job said I should do,” he said. “I can understand on some level, very small level, why it might appear minutely that there was something [wrong].”

Rothblum said because there was only one slate, he didn’t see a possibility for a conflict of interest but once he saw the potential for it, he also cut off his connection with the campaign.

The executive slates being taken off the ballot was not the decision of the Rules committee, Rothblum said. When the other candidates, Jeremy Ziemer, graduate student in political science and Thomas Danielson, junior in civil engineering, both GSB senators, found out being on the ballot was against the rules, they dropped out of the race.

No more changes will be made to the ballot, Gilbert said. Changes will need to be made to the timeline so that the dates match up with the bylaws and computation services.

“We’re just trying to find the fairest way,” Gilbert said.