Fatina Abdrabboh, director of the Michigan branch of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC Michigan), filed a lawsuit in Washtenaw County Court last week against Eastern Michigan University.
The lawsuit, which names six plaintiffs, outlines how the university tossed out about 1,200 votes cast by the student body in an online election in March.
“We view it as a voting rights issue,” she said.
Abdrabboh said the issue is not about student president candidate Fatma Jaber, a Muslim Arab American woman who she said serves as the highest voted senator in student government and helped run the campaign for her incumbent last year.
Jaber asked to meet with the university’s board of regents before ADC Michigan got involved, Abdrabboh said, but was unsuccessful.
“It’s not about her winning; it’s about votes being counted,” she said.
Jaber is not one of the plaintiffs named in the lawsuit. The six plaintiffs are students whose votes were thrown out, Abdrabboh said.
The student governing council on elections said the votes were disqualified because Jaber participated in illegal campaigning and improper ballots. Jaber was accused of approaching students with a laptop, offering candy to students if they agreed to vote for her, The Eastern Echo, the University’s student newspaper, reported. She was also accused of sliding the laptop away from one student, then typing in her name and submitting the vote for the student, the report said. She admitted to doing that but denied ever submitting votes herself, according to the report.
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