SG senate chooses new elections supervisor
At Tuesday night’s meeting, the Student Government senate selected sophomore Andrew Kirkland to be the supervisor of elections for the upcoming student body presidential elections. He will lead the Election Rules Commission, which is charged with marketing and policing the elections in spring, which have a history of being complicated. In fact, the SG supreme court has been asked to hand down rulings involving ERC decisions in all of the past three presidential elections.
Several student body presidential campaigns have been disqualified from elections by the ERC in the past three years only to have those decisions eventually reversed.
Before voting, senators asked the candidates questions about how they planned to increase voter turnout as well as how they planned to fairly and effectively police campaigns.
Outside the meeting, Kirkland said his top priority for the spring will be supervising the campaigns and maintaining the integrity of the election results.
“I want students to be able to come out and to feel like this was fair,” Kirkland said.Kirkland also has plans for marketing the campaign.
“I want to be able to break a record of students voting,” Kirkland said.
He added that he sees breaking 5,000 votes as a very achievable goal. The previous record is nearly 5,000 in spring 2005.
Kirkland defeated junior Cindy Lorenzo and senior Andrew Read for the position. Read has been a member of the ERC for the past three years. He served as the supervisor of elections in 2004. Outside of the meeting, Read said he has not decided if he wants to join the ERC under Kirkland.
Lorenzo said she plans to apply for another position in the ERC.
At the same meeting, student body President Maxon Victor said he would not run for re-election this spring and that he would remove himself from any campaigning.
He said he plans to help ensure the ERC remains totally unbiased in the spring as there have been problems in the past.
Victor’s ticket was disqualified and requalified this spring before ultimately winning the election.
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