Ben Shaw (COL ‘08) and Matt Appenfeller (COL ‘08) won the Student Association’s executive election last night. Election commissioner Alison Noelker (COL ‘07) announced that the ticket had won the election with 52 percent of the vote.
“We’re happy with the results; we’re happier there were no major problems,” Appenfeller said after the announcement.
With a history of elections marred by complaints of misconduct and re-voting, this year’s Student Association presidential election went smoothly for the first first time in three years. Because Shaw and Appenfeller received a clear majority of first-choice votes, there was no need for instant run-off voting, a new voting system that the Student Association Senate implemented this year.
Of the 2,121 ballots counted, 1,973 were considered valid. Noelker said that the 148 invalid ballots due to voter errors had no affect on the results.
Munir Jawed (SFS ‘08), Enoch Bevel’s (COL ‘08) running mate, said that he and Bevel were considering lodging a complaint before the 4:59 deadline yesterday afternoon because they had heard of people who said they had not received the e-mail with the link to the ballot. Noelker assured Bevel and Jawed that University Information Services, which was running the ballot system, was doing everything in its control to ensure the ballots reached everyone. Noelker cited over-full inboxes as one of the reasons a student might not have gotten the email.
All of the candidates who were present at the announcment were gracious, shaking hands and congratulating each other on well-run campaigns after Noelker’s announcement.
“Those are the guys we wanted to lose to,” Jake Styacich (COL ‘09) said, who complimented the Shaw-Appenfeller campaign on its sense of humor. Twister Murchison (SFS ‘08), who was declared the winner of last year’s close election after Khalil Hibri (SFS ’07) was disqualified, said that Shaw’s 52 percent win “produces a mandate for action.”
Of the many promises that Shaw and Appenfeller made during the campaign, Appenfuller mentioned that getting newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post available on campus and in the dorms was one of the first on their list.
Luke Hillman (COL ‘08) and Gage Raley (COL ‘08), who won four percent of the first-choice votes, did not attend because they were in their Campaigns and Elections class.
