Pascalle S. Ricard made up one half of the slate

Pascalle S. Ricard, a member of the two-person Purple Party and a candidate for the position of Director of Events, has been disqualified from running in the UVSS board election.

It’s a move that shortens an already brief list of electoral candidates and leaves three students — Pierre-Paul Angelblazer, Curtis Brett Whittla, and now Noor Chasib — running unopposed for executive positions.

On Feb. 15, the UVSS Elections website posted an updated list of candidates without Ricard’s name listed. The next day, an official “Electoral Complaints” page confirmed that a candidate had been disqualified.

The complaint lists infractions in line with UVSS Electoral Policy sections 4.2 A i and 4.3 A — sections that dictate nomination signatures and other candidate information. Ricard appealed her disqualification decision to the Elections Adjudicator as well as an Arbitration panel, both of whom upheld the decision.

The complaint also cited UVSS Electoral Policy section 5.1 A as a reason for disqualification. The section says candidates must show up to meetings scheduled by the Chief Electoral Officer, and was allegedly breached when Ricard failed to show up to an official Elections Office meeting on time.

The descriptions match with information provided to the Martlet by a close source of the Purple Party slate, who says that Ricard was disqualified due to a technicality with the signatures she collected when applying to be a candidate.

In order to be nominated as a candidate for the board, a student must collect 15 signatures from other undergraduate students at UVic. The source claimed that one of Ricard’s signatures had come from a graduate student, invalidating the nomination, and two other signatures were unable to be confirmed by the UVic registrar and were deemed ineligible.

Ricard filed an appeal against her disqualification — allegedly providing five additional signatures — but she missed a 24-hour grace period in which students can re-submit faulty applications. Her appeal was rejected by the Elections Adjudicator and the Arbitration Panel.

Chief Electoral Officer Karen Potts told the Martlet that neither she nor the Electoral Office could comment on specifics pertaining to individuals, but released a statement saying the Office “greatly respects, and will support, all UVSS members willing to be nominated as candidates, in any way possible, within the limits of the UVSS Electoral Policy and Electoral Office resources.”

There are now only 18 students running for the 16 UVSS board positions; 16 of whom belong to the Envision slate.