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In an election reminiscent of hanging chads and defunct voting machines from the 2000 U.S. presidential election, the Student Government Association race was decided before students left the campus for spring break, but not with everyone’s vote.
The preliminary results left only President-elect Rudy Spencer with a confirmed position, and the three remaining races to have run off votes as no one candidate obtained more than 40 percent of the vote.
SGA Chief Justice Kyle Riggs made the final decision six minutes before midnight on the night the results were released to throw out the ballots of those who chose to abstain from voting. Without those votes, Executive Vice President-elect Mike Dennis and Services Vice President-elect Dani Smith surpassed 40 percent of the vote, securing victories in their respective elections.
Riggs stated in an e-mail that he was following court precedence, as last year’s Supreme Court decided not only to instate the use of the “invisible fourth candidate” as an option on the ballot, but to also only count the students that opted to vote in the individual race. He pointed out that ULink’s system is set up to count the abstaining votes as a fourth candidate, and therefore wrongly increases the total votes for each race, skewing the percentage of votes for each candidate.
Riggs was not at fault for following precedence, as that is his job as the chief justice.
But not realizing that a situation like this could occur falls on the heads of the past Supreme Court as well as this one. It is easy to blame Ulink for the technological glitch, but unacceptable nonetheless.
The Supreme Court should have expected something like this to happen and should have brainstormed a plausible solution beforehand, which would have possibly prevented potential outbursts.
Rather than letting students vote for an invisible candidate, allow them to simply skip that individual election. This option would not skew the results like adding an extra candidate does.
Though the “Unofficial Results” that Riggs released are a part of the election rules and procedures of the SGA guide, they merely raised the hopes of the candidates whose races had already been decided.
Results should not be given until they are final.
Moreover, students are at fault for choosing to abstain from an election. Those who do, normally choose to do so because they are ignorant of the candidates and their platforms.
It is up to the students to educate themselves on all of this.
So many abstentions also points to SGA elections becoming more of a popularity contest and less about choosing the best leader for the job.
