Election results delayed by write-ins - BoE releases presidential election winners

Election results delayed by write-ins - BoE releases presidential election winners

By Xiao-Bo Yuan · The Johns Hopkins News-Letter · April 27, 2005

Partial results from last week's Student Council class elections were released Wednesday night, confirming the election of the next senior, junior and sophomore class presidents, said Board of Elections co-chair Michael Seibert.

The rest of the tallied results, however, remain in the hands of Director of Student Involvement Jeffrey Groden-Thomas, who has yet to release the results of the other StuCo class officer elections.

Groden-Thomas did not answer inquiries for comment.

According to Seibert, Nattavadee Temkasem was elected president of the class of 2006, Shereef Mohamed Elmahal was elected class of 2007 president and Natasha Singh was elected class of 2008 president.

Despite an election-by-paper ballot that Executive President-elect Atin Agarwal said "went pretty well," StuCo members have cited various complications after the election that prevented the BoE from releasing results at the Tuesday night StuCo meeting as customary.

According to Agarwal, the over-200 write-in votes delayed the BoE's vote counting. He said that an unusual number of write-in votes were cast because some class officer positions had no official candidates running on the ballot.

"A lot of spots weren't being filled," Agarwal said. "It's understandable that the BoE needed more time to count the ballots."

Other candidates also reported that they struggled with complications with inadequate publicity and incorrectly printed ballots on the day of voting.

Singh, the president-elect of the class of 2008, said that several paper ballots distributed last Thursday featured incorrect printings of candidates' names for the 2008 legislation committee.

"They fixed it by 6 p.m. on Thursday," Singh said.

Singh and Agarwal criticized the BoE for inadequate advertising before the elections last Thursday.

"The advertising was horrendous," Agarwal said. "The BoE posted candidate names on their website the night before the elections."

Singh agreed that there was also little visibility for candidates prior to the election, saying, "There wasn't anyone at the candidates' forum but candidates."

She added that she hoped the current StuCo efforts to pursue a constitutional amendment that would re-form the BoE would eventually improve the publicity and advertising situation in the future.

Despite the delays in releasing election results and what some perceived as inadequately publicized elections, StuCo members praised the second elections this year on paper ballot as more efficient than online voting.

"Ironically, I do think there was higher turnout with paper ballots," said class of 2007 president-elect Elmahal. "Online voting is done over a longer span, so students can say, ÔOh, I'll just vote later.' And there were all these issues with the website not working."

Agarwal also commented on a possible higher turnout, although the BoE has not released official numbers.

"I think there might've been a higher turnout [than in the previous elections] because the balloting booths were placed in better areas on campus," he said.

Singh and Elmahal expressed optimism for their work as class presidents in the coming year. Temkasem was not available for comment.

"I want to be heavily involved in the constitutional aspects and reforming for more efficiency," Elmahal said. "I think StuCo should just be recreational. We should have more involvement in addressing students' academic concerns, like curriculum and scheduling difficulties."

He added, "Even though we have a curriculum committee, it seems like StuCo can better represent students' needs."

Singh commented that she will seek to increase community involvement among the class of 2008 activities and possibly work with local colleges to hold joint activities, such as a club night.