Citing a gross lack of justice and democracy in last week’s Boston University Student Union Senate elections and a loss of faith in the system, Tribunal member Lisa Franchini resigned her post in a pre-dawn email.

The email, addressed to her fellow tribunes and Senate and E-board leaders, as well as The Daily Free Press, branded the Senate elections “invalid” and accused the Student Union Election Commission of making “a mockery of the system” with sloppy election procedures.

Franchini, a College of Arts and Science junior, spent two years on the Tribunal, which operates like the Supreme Court of the Student Union, resolving constitutional problems.

Franchini said when she went to vote during the voting period, she was appalled at the process.

“I’m going to dinner with my friends and I see a little booth for SUEC and I walk up and the girl slaps down a paper in front of me and says circle two senators,” Franchini said. “She takes the paper, and I said ‘Is that it?’ and she said ‘Yeah.’ I asked her how she was keeping track and she said it was a secret.

“I told her, ‘You have to tell me, I’m a Tribunal member,'” Franchini said. “She pretty much told me they couldn’t get lists of the student body so there was no way to keep track so they decided not to.”

Franchini also said the student working at the booth said Union President Ethan Clay told her to operate elections in that way, and that Franchini would have to “take it up with him.”

However, SUEC Chairwoman Jeanette Jankiewicz said the commission still has all the ballots from last week’s elections, including the ID numbers of every voter.

Franchini, though, questioned Jankiewicz comments, saying no one wrote down her ID number or even asked for it.

However, Franchini said the Senators who currently hold seats should realize the elections were faulty and the Senators who lost should take aggressive actions and file a writ to allow the Tribunal to investigate elections.

“If you lost this election, you deserve to file a writ. The fact that you lost means nothing because the Senator who won could have had five of his buddies vote 20 million times,” Franchini said. “The Union would be taking two steps back to redo the elections, but right now you have Senators sitting who have no legitimacy.”

Franchini also contested the number of voters Jankiewicz claimed took to the polls and said there was no way to get an accurate figure.

“It wasn’t double the number of voters, it was double the number of votes,” Franchini said.

If the allegations prove true, they could call into question not only the record number of votes SUEC reported but also the validity of each senator’s appointment.

Jankiewicz fiercely disagreed with Franchini’s allegations, defending the conduct of the commission and the results of the elections. (see Elections story, pg. 1)

“The elections are completely legitimate, and SUEC did try to get lists of where people lived but we were denied access,” Jankiewicz said.

Franchini said she hoped the Tribunal would use special powers written into their charter and enact the “Suspension of the Rules” clause.

“The point of it is if all else fails, and it’s going so terribly wrong, we’re allowed to break some formal rules to serve what’s in the best interest of the student body,” Franchini said.

Beyond her specific accusations of impropriety during last week’s elections, Franchini said she alerted Student Activities Office Director Carolyn Norris to the voting problems, but Norris said SAO would take no action on the matter.

“When I talked to Carolyn Norris, her take on it was ‘This is what I think happened last year, and we’re going to go with it. We’re just going to have to use the honor system,'” Franchini said.

“I literally almost cried. I had to bite my tongue to walk out of that room,” Franchini said. “I was expecting her to think somewhat the same way I did but she was pretty much looking to save face.”

Franchini said while some may not look at her resignation as the best course of action, she did not feel right working for an organization where she did not feel vindicated at the end of the day.

“I would have liked to work within the system to change it, but I didn’t have any other options,” Franchini said. “I was the Fall Welcome Coordinator this year and it was the most rewarding thing I’ve done at BU. It would have been hard for me to stick with this.”