The endorsement post that started it all — where appearing on the same voting guide as your opponent gets you convicted, but not him.
The first of the three strikes against Aydin Yelkovan began with an Instagram post he did not write, by an organization he did not run, that also happened to endorse the opponent who would eventually win his race.
In early April, Students for Justice in Palestine, an on-campus advocacy group, published a voting guide for the 2026 undergraduate elections. Like many student endorsement posts, it was built as an Instagram collaboration: candidates could accept an invitation to appear as a co-author on SJP's page. Yelkovan accepted. So, eventually, did his opponent, Ricardo Miranda. The guide listed one of them as SJP's first-ranked choice and the other as its second.
A student named Ramirez filed a grievance against Yelkovan, Case 13, alleging that appearing on SJP's guide violated two provisions of the AS Elections Code: Section 15(2)(b), which bars campaign social media accounts from "coordinating with other campaigns," and Section 43(k), which restricts sharing campaign resources across candidates. Two other student-organization endorsement posts, from the Muslim Student Association and the Association of Muslims in Politics and Law, were presented as corroborating evidence. Yelkovan had only appeared as a collaborator on the SJP guide.
The SJP voting guide listed endorsements for both Yelkovan and Miranda in the same external-affairs race, one ranked first, the other second. SJP had independently decided to endorse both. Yelkovan's only action was accepting a collaboration invite.
The Electoral Commission found Yelkovan guilty of coordinating with "another campaign." The campaign he was said to have coordinated with, however, was Miranda's, the opponent listed directly underneath him on the same SJP graphic.
Read plainly, that reading makes little sense. An outside organization had decided, on its own, to endorse two candidates in the same race and publish that choice on its own feed. Yelkovan did not design the guide, did not choose who else appeared on it, and could not have removed Miranda from it even if he had wanted to. Yet the Commission treated his acceptance of the SJP collaboration as if it were a joint campaign act with the very opponent he was trying to beat.
The text of the code is narrow. Section 15(2)(b) forbids campaign social media accounts from "coordinating with other campaigns, collaborat[ing] with, shar[ing] or repost[ing] any content promoting or supporting another candidate." SJP is not a campaign. Miranda's campaign was not coordinating with Yelkovan's; they were competing for the same seat.
Miranda, whose name appeared on the same SJP post, was not a defendant in Case 13. Commissioners have, in other situations, filed grievances themselves when they believed a candidate had broken a rule. None of them did so here. Days later, someone else did.
A separate grievance, Case 25 (Dixit v. Miranda), was filed against Miranda citing the same two code sections and relying on the same evidence: the same SJP voting guide, the same screenshot, the same conduct. The only difference was the name of the accused.
Same code sections. Same screenshot. Same SJP voting guide. Different defendant.
Outcome: Dismissed.
The Commission dismissed the complaint against Miranda. The conviction of Yelkovan stood.
The Commission has argued, in other contexts, that it takes its enforcement duties seriously. In Case 10, the chalking ban, a commissioner personally filed a grievance against another candidate for conduct the Commission believed violated the code, rather than waiting for an outside complaint. The enforcement instinct existed. It simply was not applied to Miranda.
Case 13 is, in the end, a story told by its pair. The same post produced a conviction for one candidate and a dismissal for the other. That is the pattern that would repeat across the rest of the cycle, each time adding another strike against Yelkovan. By the time the third arrived, he would be off the ballot.