Student Government Association issues apology after misplacing 32 voter registration forms

The Student Government Association issued an apology Wednesday to 32 students after misplacing their voter registration forms resulting in them being unable to vote.

"On Thursday, Oct. 11, while cleaning up our voter registration materials, Vice President (Killian) Richeson found these 32 forms in his office. Unfortunately, these forms were somehow misplaced and kept away from the other over 500 forms and, therefore, were not turned in before the voter registration deadline on Tuesday, Oct. 9," the public apology states.

Macomb junior and SGA President Justin Gawronski personally delivered the apology to all 32 students Wednesday.

He said they should have contacted those students as soon as  the forms were found after the date.

"We should have just emailed them and said we didn't get it in on time and we didn’t do that," the apology letter said. "We have no excuses for not doing so, and it was never our intention to prevent anyone from being able to vote in the election on Tuesday."

The public apology states, "Our whole intent behind this initiative was to get as many students involved with the election as possible and we deeply regret this simple error for which has resulted in 32 young disenfranchised voters. It is our hope that our error does not prevent any students from participating politically in the future, and we will work to establish a more thorough protocol to prevent this again."

Richeson said his voting registration was also misplaced the first year he was able to vote, so he understands how the students felt when attempting to vote.

"It's a frustrating and disheartening experience," he said. "... This is just embarrassing for the SGA, and we are doing all we can to amend it."

Richeson, a Hesperia senior, said SGA is formulating a clear process for future voter drives, educating volunteers how easily a similar occurrence could happen and steps that they should take to prevent errors from occurring.

"We just messed up, and that’s it," Gawronski said. "This obviously doesn't make up for it, but there's nothing else I can do"