Council To Confront First Campaign Scandal

The Undergraduate Council’s presidential elections haven’t even begun, but election officials are already investigating their first scandal.

Four days before the deadline for potential candidates to declare their intent to make a bid in next month’s election, potential candidate Justin R. Chapa ’05 is facing scrutiny for a website that may violate a ban on early campaigning.

Chapa, currently a council member, said he was unaware and uninvolved in a “Draft Justin for UC President” website, which was forwarded to several House open e-mail lists by supporters yesterday.

Council rules stipulate that candidates cannot take part in any kind of campaigning before they file a declaration of intent and cannot spend any money on their campaigns before Dec. 1.

“If [Chapa] decides to run, we would be obligated to investigate it,” said election commission chair David I. Monteiro ’04. “Obviously, the site creates a disadvantage for the other potential candidates.”

The webpage, www.draftjustin.org, touts Chapa’s accomplishments on the council.

Mark T. Silvestri ’05, Chapa’s friend and a fellow Harvard Republican Club member, said the site was his idea.

But some are concerned that Chapa has found the Harvard parallel to a campaign finance loophole.

Election rules state that “candidates shall not be held responsible for violations committed by persons other than their campaign personnel and committed with neither their own knowledge nor the knowledge or their campaign personnel.”

The election commission will explicitly investigate whether Chapa was aware of the site and if he had any role in planning it, Monteiro said.

Silvestri helped Chapa in his unsuccessful campaign for council vice

president last year.

“We would definitely take this into account,” Monteiro said.

Silvestri said that the site was created to encourage Chapa to run in the elections.

“I really want to see Justin run,” Silvestri said.

Another question hinges on the issue of expenditures.

“The rules are quite explicit in banning expenditures prior to December 1 and domain registration has a cost associated with it,” Monteiro said.

Silvestri said he spent $13.70 registering the site.

Even if the commission cannot find hard evidence that he was involved with the site’s creation, Chapa may not get off scotch free.

“Fortunately, we’re not bound by the ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ rule,” Monteiro said. “I couldn’t necessarily say that it would be okay, but it’s not explicitly under the rules and we would have to figure out the fairest thing to do.”

Chapa said that he was not aware of his friends’ intention to create the site and that he is still undecided about whether or not he will run.

“I didn’t know about the website, but was very honored that my friends decided to do it,” Chapa said, adding that the election commission has already contacted him about the site and its possible violation of election rules.

Flattered as he may be, Chapa is already trying to distance himself from the site.

“I’m not sure if I’m going to run so I don’t want to get into any trouble. I want stay as far away from the website as possible,” he said.

Monteiro said that he does not anticipate that Chapa would be disqualified from the election for his non-campaigning campaigning.

“We would have to receive evidence that we had been lied to during some point in the investigation and I don’t anticipate this occurring,” Monteiro said.

But it is likely that $44 dollars would be deducted from Chapa’s spending limit if he decided to run, according to Monteiro.

Monteiro said the website controversy was without precedent.

“I’ve never heard of anything like this. In the past three years nothing like this has happened,” he said.

—Staff writer Ebonie D. Hazle can be reached at hazle@fas.harvard.edu.