Pennsylvania travel agent Alan Fiermonte on Tuesday was disqualified as a candidate for ASTA director at large.
The disqualification was the final chapter of a dust-up between ASTA and Fiermonte over the use of certain ASTA resources.
ASTA said each candidate for office may request a list of voting members for campaign purposes, but the eight candidates for this summer’s election were inadvertently provided with the wrong list, a list that included confidential information not meant for distribution in a campaign.
ASTA asked Fiermonte to return the first list in order to receive the correct list, but he declined. Fiermonte argued, among other things, that the list in his possession had been identified as a list of voting members.
The other candidates returned the original list in exchange for the correct version, ASTA said, but that Fiermonte "used information from the list, other than the mailing data, as part of his campaign platform and in messaging to ASTA’s voting members."
At its hearing yesterday, ASTA’s election committee concluded that the list Fiermonte retained was an ASTA resource that candidates are not permitted to use for their campaigns because it contained confidential information not meant for campaigning.
In the current election, ASTA members will elect five directors at large from among seven remaining candidates. The election concludes at 5 p.m. on Wednesday.