The Program Board/Marvin Center Governing Board Elections Committee declared Seth Weinert the winner in the Program Board executive chair race, according to preliminary election results.
The Student Association Elections Committee had not completed its preliminary tally as of 4:30 a.m., but counts thus far showed presidential candidates Jeff Marootian and David Burt in a tight race. Executive vice presidential candidates Chris Voss and Cathy Resler were in a dead heat, with Pat McLaughlin not far behind.
The counts came from votes tallied from the Marvin Center, Mount Vernon and Ross Hall. For a candidate to be declared a winner in the EVP or presidential race, the candidate must obtain 40 percent of the vote. An official announcement of the winners will be made in J Street at 12:30 p.m. Thursday, SA President Caity Leu said.
The PB/MCGB Elections Committee declared Elizabeth Cox, Ben Getto, Peter Frost, and Phil Meisner the winners in the MCGB race, according to preliminary results.
Even though students were required to use paper ballots and wait in long lines, early estimates show that students came out to vote in significantly higher numbers than in previous years. Preliminary counts show that 1,437 students voted Tuesday.
Jeff Baxter, chair of the Student Association Elections Committee, said no count has been finalized on Wednesday, but he believes the count will easily surpass the 2,200 count from last year’s election. But while students showed their enthusiasm at the polls, fewer candidates and their supporters stuck around the Marvin Center until the wee hours of the morning to hear the results of the election than had in previous years.
Gone this year were the anxious crowds of students sitting in J Street until 6 a.m. waiting for any word from the Joint Elections Committee behind locked doors upstairs.
This year, the sparse crowd of supporters and candidates who were present milled around the fourth floor and walked in and out of the room where the Student Association Elections Committee counted votes and marked the tally on butcher paper for all to see. Many agreed that candidates and students decided not to stay because the paper votes left them with little hope that definitive results would be announced that night. Also, the Marvin Center closed its doors at midnight, preventing any curious students from entering later.
We sacrificed the `ra-ra’ of downstairs for a more open counting process, Baxter said. We would’ve liked to have a party, but that’s just the way things go.
Two out of four EVP candidates were present at 3 a.m., but many Senate candidates and all of the presidential candidates were nowhere be found – many had made declarations earlier in the night that they were looking forward to a full night of sleep and would find out the results in the morning.
Joe Bondi, candidate for undergraduate SA senator (at large), said he loves this but was not going to spend the night waiting for results.
I’m going to bed, he said as he headed for the elevator.
Resler was there earlier in the night but later left. Clasping her macro-economics book, she said she was more worried about her mid-term looming the next morning than the election.
But for the few SA candidates left as the hands crept around the face of the clock, staying up seemed to be the natural thing to do.
It’s part of the election process, Voss said between yawns as he lounged on a makeshift bed set up in an office on the fourth floor. I’ve been out there palmcarding for two days and to go home and sleep in a comfortable bed would be a wonderful luxury right now, but I want to see this all the way through.
McLaughlin, decked out in a pink, ruffled tuxedo shirt, found his way into the locked Marvin Center a little after 3 a.m. and said he planned on staying until his crew team practice in a couple of hours.
At this point, I wasn’t sleeping, he said. It’s not like I had anything better to do at three in the morning.
-Francesca Di Meglio, Josh Gerben, Reshma Jhaveri, Sarah Lechner, Jason Steinhardt and Kate Stepan contributed to this report.
