Two Cornell students who won seats on Ithaca’s Common Council — including the one who ran a controversial and unannounced write-in campaign — coordinated more closely with Cornell fraternities than was previously known, discussing the possibility of allowing for later fraternity parties and even getting approved to pick up absentee ballots for fraternity brothers.

Patrick Kuehl ’24, who edged out an incumbent this month in a surprise write-in campaign for the Fourth Ward, and Clyde Lederman ’26, who won a close race in the Fifth Ward, both were elected in part because of absentee and affidavit ballots cast in wards with low numbers of voters. In the Fifth Ward, 20 of the 60 absentee ballot requests were made by fraternity brothers, along with 19 of the 22 requests in the Fourth Ward. The forms obtained by The Sun only indicate who requested ballots, and do not indicate which of those requestors actually voted.

The ballot applications show that all of the fraternity brothers who requested absentee ballots in the fourth and fifth wards authorized either Kuehl or Lederman to pick up their ballots from the Tompkins County Board of Elections and deliver them to the fraternities. Ballots were requested by members of five fraternities, with the most requests coming from Sig Phi, Chi Psi and Delta Kappa Epsilon.

[Talk about your guerilla campaigns. ~ Beege]