CSUF Fires Professor Accused of Vote Fraud

A longtime Cal State Fullerton professor has been notified that he is being fired after accusations by a faculty committee that he rigged a faculty election, the chairman of the Academic Senate said Thursday.

Charles Povlovich, a tenured history professor with 27 years at the university, has appealed the decision and is still teaching, said Julian Foster, chairman of the Academic Senate.

Neither Povlovich, who previously has been quoted in published reports as denying the forging of ballots, or Cal State Fullerton President Jewel Plummer Cobb could be reached for comment Thursday.

But an account of the incident appeared Thursday in the campus newspaper, the Daily Titan. Foster, who played a role in the investigation of the ballot forgery, confirmed most details of the Titan’s account.

According to the paper, the firing stemmed from an eight-month-long investigation of Povlovich by a five-member faculty committee that included Foster. The committee concluded that Povlovich had destroyed 100 ballots and forged new ones during elections for the campus faculty organization last April, Foster confirmed.

The report by the investigative committee, which included three faculty members and a representative of the university administration, was passed on to President Cobb. Foster declined Thursday to say whether the committee had recommended Povlovich’s termination.

According to the campus newspaper article, Cobb notified Povlovich by letter last month that he was fired as of Feb. 15 because of the committee’s findings. In a brief statement issued Thursday by her secretary, Cobb said she “could not comment on personnel matters at this time.”

Foster confirmed that Povlovich had appealed his firing and that the history professor was being represented in the dispute by the California Faculty Assn. A spokeswoman for the CFA office in Los Angeles said Povlovich’s case is “under legal proceedings, so there will be no comment.”

The committee accused Povlovich of destroying 100 of the 429 ballots cast in the election last April and replacing them with 100 forgeries, the newspaper reported and Foster confirmed. The forged ballots cast votes for history department chairman James Woodward for a seat on the faculty council and against two minor referendums. Povlovich, a former faculty council chairman, was chairman of the elections committee at the time.

Woodward won that election by nine votes. Both referendums--one seeking a name change from the Faculty Council to the current title, Academic Senate, and the other allowing officers of that advisory group to serve consecutive terms--were defeated initially.

But a second election was held after the bogus ballots were discovered a few days later. In the second round of balloting, Woodward lost and both propositions passed. The five-member investigative committee later determined that Povlovich had had access to the ballots during a two-day period when the forged ballots were stuffed and that he destroyed the originals.

Asked why Povlovich might have forged ballots, Foster said in a telephone interview Thursday, “I have no idea.”

In a September article that appeared in the Senate Forum, an Academic Senate publication, Foster wrote, “I doubt we shall ever understand the motive behind this sad little business.”