Kaleb Truchan and Aydin Yelkovan ran in the 2026 Associated Students UC San Diego election for Vice President of External Affairs. Ricardo Miranda, the incumbent, was also a candidate in the same race. According to vote totals communicated to campaigns, which had not yet been officially released by Associated Students at the time of writing, Truchan received approximately 2,700 votes, Yelkovan approximately 2,500 votes, and Miranda just over 1,000 votes. These figures indicate that Truchan and Yelkovan together received more than 5,300 votes, substantially exceeding Miranda’s total. These numbers are based on campaign communications and were not yet confirmed in an official public results report.
The governing rules for the election are set out in the ASUCSD Elections Code effective December 3, 2025. Section 14 provides that when the Electoral Commission finds a grievance complaint valid and determines that a candidate has violated the Elections Code or other applicable regulations, the Elections Manager may issue a verbal warning, a formal warning, or disqualification, following the Commission’s decision. Section 14 also states that a candidate who receives three or more formal warnings must be disqualified. In addition, formal warnings and disqualification notices must be made public, while verbal warnings do not need to be publicly disclosed but must be recorded and reported to the Judicial Board.
During the campaign, multiple grievance complaints were filed against both Truchan and Yelkovan under these provisions. The public sanctions record lists two formal warnings against Truchan, including a finding that he used a pre-existing Instagram account for campaign purposes in violation of Section 15(1). The record also lists two publicly reported findings involving Yelkovan, including a violation of the social media coordination rule in Section 15(2)(b) related to reposting content that promoted other candidates. Each ruling resulted in a formal warning and included instructions for removing the violating content.
Both Truchan and Yelkovan were subsequently ruled ineligible and removed from contention under the Elections Code enforcement process, which requires disqualification once a candidate accumulates three or more formal warnings. Following their disqualification, Miranda was the only remaining eligible candidate for Vice President of External Affairs and was therefore declared the winner in the certified results.
The final outcome was that the candidate who placed third in the reported vote totals secured the office as a result of the disqualification of the first and second place finishers under the Elections Code.
