Editor’s note | October 10, 3:18 p.m. This story has been updated to correct numerical errors.

In Student Government’s fall election, 41 students ran to be in the Boca House of Representatives — but only seven qualified after the election.

Dozens of candidates didn’t submit required campaign expense forms, which shows how much money they raised and what they spent it on, according to the election results. This led to the Elections Board disqualifying them from serving in the House.

The election had 47 disqualifications in all, but not all of them were due to the forms, Speaker of the House Noah Goldberg said. He did not comment on what the other bans were about. 

Soon after the Sept. 25-26 election, nine appeals were filed with the Student Court, which has jurisdiction over appeals and Elections Board decisions. After hearing out the appeals last Wednesday, the court voted unanimously to overturn the disqualifications and elect the students who were disqualified because of campaign forms to the House.

House Representative Gabriella Miernik was one of the nine who submitted an appeal. She said she believes the Elections Board could’ve done a better job informing students of the election requirements.

“I think that the election was running great [until the disqualifications],” she said. “The elections office should have emailed us a day before saying it was due the next day or better yet removed the process of filling out a form when none of us spent money.”

The Student Court also noted that the Elections Board violated several statutes, as only one student is currently on the board when there should be five students, with at least one from each partner campus. The court stated that the board failed to visit the partner campuses, hold office hours, and host a legislative “meet and greet” during the election cycle — all processes that inform candidates about how to run for office.

The election included students running for the House of Representatives, as well as six constitutional amendments, all of which passed. The election turnout can be found below:

The first House of Representatives meeting of the fall semester will take place Friday, Oct. 19 at 3:30 p.m. in the Boca Raton Student Union House Chambers, where the new reps will be sworn in by the governor.

Sophie Siegel is a staff writer with the University Press. For information regarding this or other stories, email [email protected].