Cal State Fullerton Shaken by Discovery of Vote Fraud in Faculty Council Election

In an embarrassing and so far unexplained voting scandal, 100 fake ballots were submitted in a Faculty Council election at Cal State Fullerton, council president Dorothy Heide said Wednesday.

New ballots were mailed Wednesday after the bogus ballots were discovered in last week’s election.

“I have a feeling of horror about this whole thing,” Heide said. “We are supposed to be role models of good conduct and good ethics and of abiding the law, and here someone chose to violate the election process, which we all hold so dear.”

The election, which was by mail, was to choose a faculty member for a three-year term to the 19-campus California State University Academic Senate. The ballot also had two routine proposals for a referendum vote.

Faculty Stunned

Campus officials said neither the Academic Senate election nor the referenda had caused any heated debate on campus. Most faculty members were reported stunned by the ballot tampering.

Political science professor Keith Boyum and history professor James Woodward were running for the non-paying Academic Senate seat. Heide said the vote count, including the 100 bogus ballots, showed Woodward winning 216 to 209.

The vote count of all the ballots also showed the two proposed changes in the Faculty Council constitution losing.

One of the proposals was to change the name of Cal State Fullerton’s Faculty Council to “Academic Senate,” and the other was to allow Faculty Council officers to be elected to a second consecutive term.

Candidates ‘Devastated’

“All of the bogus ballots were for Woodward and against the two constitutional changes,” Heide said. “It is impossible to know if the person who tampered with the ballots wanted Jim (Woodward) to win or the amendments to fail.”

Heide, however, said that she and the rest of the Faculty Council are certain that neither Woodward nor Boyum knew of the ballot-box stuffing. “They both were devastated when I told them.”

She added: “My belief is that whoever did this had a lot of emotional feeling tied up in the outcome of the election. The person may be sick.”

Heide said the 100 bogus ballots had been made on a copier machine. They were discovered “by alert staff in the Faculty Council office” last Friday as the ballots were being counted, she said in a memo to all faculty members.

The first ballots had been mailed out April 22, and faculty members had until last week to return them.

The new ballots are a different size and type than the old ones, she said. This second mail ballot will be concluded May 16, she said, and the new tally taken then.