The Joint Elections Commission’s top official who has organized, staffed and sustained the commission for three years will graduate this spring, leaving the body with a lack of experienced leadership for the first time in years.
JEC Chair Michael Ubis, who held leadership roles on the six-person commission for three years and oversaw the last two Student Government Association elections, is graduating this spring along with the body’s vice chair, Edward Kemelmakher. During his tenure, Ubis oversaw the body’s expanded voter engagement efforts, increased investigations into SGA candidates’ conduct during elections and a series of drastic structural reforms which included a reorganization of the body’s responsibilities.
“I’ve always been behind the scenes doing a lot of the work,” Ubis said. “I’ve always been the one answering most of the emails from the JEC inbox, so anything that happens operationally that we sign off just as the JEC was probably me.”
Kemelmakher, who has been with the JEC for the last two election cycles and presides over violation hearings alongside Ubis, is also set to graduate this spring.
The JEC operates and oversees all SGA elections by organizing the election, selecting the date and counting votes, as well as investigating any alleged candidate misconduct during the campaigning process.
Ubis said SGA Vice President and president-elect Ethan Lynne, who will be responsible for appointing the next commissioner, was initially not “aware” that he was graduating this year and that the body would be left with its top two spots vacant and no successors who have knowledge of the JEC’s operational procedures.
“I did meet with him, and he had originally offered me the chairmanship of the JEC again,” Ubis said.
For the last three years, the JEC struggled with staffing, forcing him to resort to recruiting his friends — including Kemelmakher — to join the body in order to fill the JEC’s five open positions.
Ubis served as Deputy Election Commissioner, the JEC’s second highest position, last academic year and said he is most “proud” of the uptick in voter turnout during the 2024 SGA election, following a record low turnout in 2023. Voter turnout dropped by 20.3 percent this year, the second-lowest turnout in the last 11 SGA elections.
Ubis said he led the JEC’s efforts to conduct more voter outreach, information sessions and tabling events in 2024. Ubis also attributed last year’s higher turnout to the JEC’s increased advertising of the SGA presidential and vice presidential debate.
“Trying to make that debate more popular, more publicized was definitely something that we did that increased turnout, also trying to recruit more candidates,” Ubis said. “That’s what really drives turnout, is the candidates being out there telling people to vote.”
Ubis said the next election commissioner should have no prior “involvement” with the SGA, so they will have no “preconceived biases” against any SGA members. Ubis said he was not involved with the SGA prior to joining the JEC.
“The JEC really needs to remain independent and separate from the SGA to the greatest extent possible,” Ubis said.
During Ubis’ tenure, the SGA passed a bill to split the JEC into three branches last spring, with one running the election, another creating policy and a third investigating candidates’ alleged misconduct. Ubis said at a SGA meeting in February that the three-branch structure complicated the election process, as the body had to recruit more people to fill the new positions.
The SGA passed a bill to revert the JEC back to its original structure in February, merging its three committees back into one.
“It was a challenging structure that was under the three commission structure,” Ubis said. “So we did do things differently than we had done the previous year. We were more upfront with what the rules are going to be.”
Ubis started as the policy and finance commissioner for the JEC in 2023, where he said he wrote “almost all” advisory opinions, which clarified JEC proceedings in its charter and acted as official guidance for JEC officials.
“It’s not a very big role, but there are so many things to get done and only five people to do it, and we had grad students and a lot of people who were in their later years at GW on the commission my first year,” Ubis said. “So a lot of the work, the things we needed to get done fell upon me.”
Ubis said presiding over campaign election hearings was the most “difficult” part of his tenure on the JEC because he had to hold everybody to the same standard.
“No matter which way they go, somebody’s going to be upset,” Ubis said. “In some way, the JEC, we like to try and make everybody happy, but that’s obviously not possible.”
Under Ubis’ tenure, the JEC investigated Lynne’s unauthorized collection of student signatures in an academic building for his presidential campaign in this year’s SGA election. Lynne pleaded guilty to five campaign violations after an agent collected signatures in the basement of Phillips Hall, which violated JEC regulations, putting him one point away from disqualification one month before the election.
Ubis last year also conducted an investigation into former SGA senator Dan Saleem and then-presidential candidate, where he was found in violation of JEC guidelines by collecting endorsements from the leaders of two student organizations before the official election campaign period opened.
Ubis said he had to make decisions in violation hearings that centered on what the rules dictated, not his personal opinions.
“I don’t think that Ethan Lynne and his authorized agent, in the case of this violation hearing, I don’t think that person willfully went out and tried to violate the rules, but at the end of the day, you have to uphold that,” Ubis said
Ubis said if he could “go back” to the beginning of his term on the JEC, he would try to meet with and understand the candidates running for offices’ points of view on election rules earlier on to reduce tensions during the election.
“I think we viewed them maybe a little bit too much in an adversarial manner, when it’s more of a partnership thing,” Ubis said. “We want to partner with candidates to increase turnout.”
Lynne will have the power to appoint the next election commissioner as SGA president. Lynne said selecting the next election commission is not of the “utmost urgency” because he is currently in the process of staffing his presidential cabinet.
Lynne said he wants to “open” the position to the general student body to elevate “non-SGA” voices, instead of appointing existing JEC members. Lynne said he is currently “figuring out” how to advertise the position to find a new potential nominee.
“I think for far too long we’ve left this in a system where we just continue to appoint the same people to the same positions, especially with the JEC,” Lynne said. “And I think bringing in an outsider might be really good, might give us a really good perspective.
Lynne said he is looking for an organized, detail-oriented candidate with a good work ethic because they will need to keep up with a “very complicated” system. He also said he hopes to see more clarity and reevaluation of some of the body’s rules that might be “outdated” and “overly strict.”
“I think that my situation definitely opened my eyes to a large side of things that I hadn’t seen before,” Lynne said. “So definitely taking protections against doxing when it comes to student government elections needs to be of the utmost importance.”
Lynne said the biggest problem the JEC is facing right now is its legitimacy because a lot of students do not understand the purpose of the body. Lynne said increasing student understanding of the JEC is crucial for increasing legitimacy and student confidence in the body’s rulings.
“Hopefully, when we work on re-chartering it, and with the nominees, we can really clean up and then simplify a lot of it,” Lynne said.
