On April 8, 2026, Jack Derby filed a grievance against four respondents: William Simpson, Moazzma Chaudhary, Rehya Arora, and Aydin Yelkovan. The charge was Section 44(a) of the AS Elections Code, which requires candidates to "campaign in a civil and decent manner." The case was approved for consideration on April 9 and heard on April 10, the last day of voting. The Electoral Commission found all four guilty and issued formal warnings. Yelkovan appealed. The AS Judicial Board dismissed the appeal.

The Case 27 tracker entry does not itself say Yelkovan was disqualified. What it records is a formal warning and a denied appeal. But Case 27 was Yelkovan's third formal warning of the election cycle, following Case 13 (voting-guide reposts) and Case 24 (the Oliver Ma Instagram story). Under Section 14(2) of the Elections Code, three formal warnings triggers automatic disqualification. Yelkovan had finished second in the Round 1 vote for EVP of External Affairs with over 34 percent. After his disqualification and the separate disqualification of first-place finisher Kaleb Truchan, the incumbent who had finished third ran unopposed in the runoff.

This is the full account of what happened in Case 27, based on the hearing transcript, the complaint filing, the endorsement forms, the Instagram screenshots entered into evidence, and the Grievances Tracker.

The Accusation

Derby's complaint was not that the four candidates had personally said something uncivil. It was that a registered student organization called Blind Snakes Co-op, a disability rights group, had posted aggressive campaign rhetoric on Instagram, and that the four candidates bore responsibility because each of them had signed an endorsement verification form that made them accountable for the endorsing organization's conduct during the election.

The complaint form named all four respondents and attached seven screenshots: four endorsement verification forms (one per candidate) and three screenshots of Blind Snakes Co-op's Instagram activity.

In his opening argument at the hearing, Derby laid out the theory directly. He told the Commission that "the four first documents you shared are intent of endorsement verification forms" and that "the documents were signed by all parties and bind them to the terms laid out in the documents." His argument was not about authorship. It was about contractual responsibility within the election system.

What Was Posted on Instagram

The Instagram posts and comments that triggered the complaint were directed at Mina Nguyen's campaign for Executive Vice President. Blind Snakes Co-op had been critical of what it saw as a lack of attention to disability issues among certain candidates, and its posts reflected that frustration in pointed language.

One comment from the Blind Snakes Co-op account read: "We appreciate you owning that you haven't shown up loudly for disabled students in the past." Another said: "Why was our community's name missing from your platform and the debate responses until now?" A separate comment from an unaffiliated user, djfluids, was more confrontational: "Disabled people aren't some political pawn you can use for votes."

A separate Instagram story post from the Blind Snakes account used a video clip from the presidential debate, overlaid with the question that had been asked about disability inclusion, and a caption reading "@minaforucsd, your frequent use of the word 'community' feels hollow."

These are the statements Derby argued violated Section 44(a). The Commission had to decide two things: whether the posts were uncivil under the code, and whether the candidates were responsible for them.

The Endorsement Forms

The endorsement forms are the core of the case. Each form was signed by Matthew Diego Benny as the Blind Snakes Co-op representative and by the individual candidate accepting the endorsement. The form language states that the candidate "accept[s] the endorsement by the Registered Student Organization on my behalf or behalf of my slate" and that the candidate "take[s] responsibility for any violations the RSO engages in surrounding the election and when promoting my campaign as outlined in the AS Election Code."

Derby argued that "surrounding the election" was broad, not limited to the candidate's specific race. He told the Commission: "the endorsement verification form that everyone signed ... states that candidates also take responsibility for any violation the RSO engages in surrounding the election. Not any particular election, the election as a whole."

That language is why Case 27 is more than a "someone said something mean on Instagram" complaint. The forms attempted to tie each candidate to the endorsing organization's conduct, at least within the election system's own framework. The central question was whether that language could fairly be used to impose formal sanctions on candidates who claimed they had no control over the specific posts.

Each Candidate's Defense

Simpson

Simpson argued that the conduct occurred outside the election period and that he had no involvement in writing the posts. The distinction matters: the campaign period ran from March 29 through April 10, but the election period, when students were actually voting, was April 6 through 10. Simpson's argument was that the posts predated the voting window, suggesting the code's civility requirement should be read narrowly. He told the Commission he had "zero involvement in the post," that he "didn't share the post, nor have I commented anything disrespectful," and that after seeing the content he called and texted the Blind Snakes representative, asking him to "please archive the post."

He also presented evidence of follow-up. He told the Commission he had emailed Mina Nguyen twice, quoting his message: "I'm not in support of the Blind Snakes post about you. I think this election has gotten out of hand and hope that things can de-escalate. I've requested that they remove the post and revoke their endorsement." He said Nguyen replied: "Hey, William. Thank you for clearing. I appreciate hearing from you. I agree with you that this has gone out of hand." Simpson argued the post was removed that evening.

Simpson also raised a separate point: that the person in one of the Blind Snakes videos endorsing Nguyen was "not a qualified elector," which he called "a blatant violation of the election code." He noted he had not filed a grievance over it.

His defense was diligence and mitigation: he did not write it, he tried to get it taken down, and he had a paper trail showing he did.

Chaudhary

Chaudhary's defense followed a similar structure but was more personal. She said she had spoken to the Blind Snakes representative in person and told him, "let's try our best to keep things civil." She said she did not know the Instagram comment had been made until later and had no intention of damaging Nguyen's reputation. She told the Commission: "I have no personal intention or motive to be like, oh, yeah, like, or push Blind Snakes to say anything against her." She offered to issue a public apology if needed.

Arora

Arora denied direct involvement. She told the Commission: "I had no input into what Blind Snakes posted. I didn't ask them to post that." She said she had verbally asked the representative to take the post down and that there was "no bad blood" between her and Nguyen. She added that she "didn't endorse them to comment on the post either."

Yelkovan

Yelkovan's defense was the most legally combative and the most different from the others. Where Simpson, Chaudhary, and Arora argued they had tried to stop the posts, Yelkovan attacked the legal theory itself on multiple fronts.

He first asked to have his case separated from the others, arguing he was "not involved in the race that is included in the comments." The Blind Snakes posts were directed at Nguyen's campaign. Yelkovan was running for EVP of External Affairs, a different position entirely.

He also argued that the endorsement form itself was problematic, saying it looked like "collective campaigning" in violation of Section 43(k). And he raised a broader free-expression concern, telling the Commission that university policy means the student government "may not censor its content based on the viewpoint expressed in the publication." He called any action against the RSO "chilling of speech." His representative cited the precedent of Eta Fog v. Ibarra, arguing that silencing organizational speech would undermine the democratic process of student government.

Derby's Rebuttal

Derby pushed back on the defenses. He told the commission: "this is not a trial against Mina, so any grievances that she may or may not have committed are not on hearing here." He returned to the form language and repeated that the candidates had signed documents making them responsible for RSO violations "surrounding the election." His core argument remained that the endorsement forms, not personal authorship, were the basis for liability.

The Atmosphere in the Room

The hearing transcript reveals how adversarial the proceeding had become by this point in the election cycle. At one point, Derby objected to being cut off by the time restriction, saying "I will be filing a ... formal grievance against you for that." The tension was not subtle.

There is also a revealing exchange captured in the transcript after the Commission left the room to deliberate. One participant says: "Such weird incentives made by the elections code, where instead of campaigning, we're doing this, right?" Another participant responds: "I, I, I one hundred percent agree."

That exchange is worth pausing on. It captures the shared frustration across both sides of the case. By the final days of the election, the code's incentive structure was pulling candidates away from campaigning and into litigation, a dynamic acknowledged even by those most actively engaged in it.

The Ruling

The Commission separated the case by respondent and found all four guilty of violating Section 44(a).

For Simpson: guilty 7-0, formal warning by a 4-3 vote on sanction.

For Chaudhary: guilty 7-0, formal warning by a 5-2 vote.

For Arora: guilty 7-0, formal warning by a 5-2 vote.

For Yelkovan: guilty 7-0, formal warning by a 5-2 vote.

Yelkovan appealed. The AS Judicial Board dismissed the appeal.

For Simpson, Chaudhary, and Arora, the formal warning was a sanction on their record but did not trigger disqualification because none of them had reached three total formal warnings. For Yelkovan, it was his third, following the formal warnings issued in Case 13 and Case 24. The tracker entry for Case 27 records the sanction as a formal warning and notes that his appeal was denied. It does not itself use the word "disqualified." But Section 14(2) of the Elections Code states that three or more formal warnings results in automatic disqualification, and the Round 2 results sheet lists Yelkovan as DISQUALIFIED.

Why This Case Matters

Case 27 was not really a speech case. It was a responsibility case.

The question the Commission had to answer was not "Were these posts uncivil?" (they were sharp, but whether they crossed the line from pointed advocacy into indecency is genuinely debatable). The question was whether candidates who signed endorsement forms could be held accountable for an organization's Instagram activity that they did not write, did not direct, and in at least some cases tried to stop.

The Commission said yes. It treated the endorsement form as a quasi-liability instrument: by accepting the endorsement and signing the form, the candidates had accepted responsibility for the endorsing organization's election conduct, regardless of whether they personally authored or approved the specific posts.

That interpretation turned the endorsement verification form from a bureaucratic reporting requirement into something much more consequential. Under this reading, any candidate who accepts an organizational endorsement is taking on legal exposure for everything that organization says or does during the election cycle. If the organization posts something the Commission later finds uncivil, the candidate gets a formal warning, and formal warnings accumulate toward automatic disqualification.

For Yelkovan specifically, the stakes were enormous. He was not running in the race the Blind Snakes posts were about. The posts criticized Mina Nguyen's campaign, not anything related to the EVP of External Affairs race. Yelkovan's connection to the conduct was entirely indirect: he had accepted an endorsement from the same organization that posted the comments about a different race. The endorsement form was the only link between him and the posts.

And that link was enough. The Commission found him guilty and issued a formal warning. Combined with his two prior formal warnings from Cases 13 and 24, this brought him to the three-warning threshold. The Round 2 results sheet lists him as disqualified. A candidate who had received over 1,800 votes and finished second in Round 1 was eliminated because a disability rights organization he had accepted an endorsement from posted pointed criticism of a candidate in a different race on Instagram.

The Larger Question

The participant who said "such weird incentives made by the elections code, where instead of campaigning, we're doing this" was describing something real. Case 27 is perhaps the clearest example of what the 2026 Elections Code produced: a system where endorsement forms became liability traps, where organizational speech became candidate speech by contractual assignment, and where the cumulative formal-warning system turned minor sanctions into existential threats.

Whether the Commission's interpretation of the endorsement form was legally correct within the code's own framework is debatable. The form language does say candidates take responsibility for RSO violations "surrounding the election." But whether that language was designed to produce outcomes like this, where a formal warning issued over Instagram comments written by someone else about a race a candidate was not even running in becomes the third warning that ends his campaign, is a question the code's authors will have to answer.

Sources: Case 27 hearing transcript; Case 27 complaint filing and attached exhibits (endorsement verification forms, Instagram screenshots); 2026 AS Election Grievances Tracker; ASUCSD Elections Code, Bylaw S-08-2025-26; Official Round 2 results sheet (listing Yelkovan as DISQUALIFIED).