USF SG announces midterm election results following delay

A technical delay extended the voting window for students by almost 12 hours, SG Supervisor of Elections Laura Shaw said. ORACLE PHOTO/LEDA ALVIM

Results for the Student Government (SG) midterm elections were announced Wednesday following a brief delay due to technical issues.

A total of 10,326 votes were cast in the election for both Senate and campus council candidates across all three campuses, with 9,427 coming from Tampa, according to SGATO Director Gary Manka.

The software used to record votes, VoteNet, was incorrectly logging U numbers, which made it difficult for the system to verify each voter was a student, according to SG Supervisor of Elections Laura Shaw. The problem was not fixed until 11:30 a.m., almost 12 hours after polls were expected to open at midnight Oct. 11.

Voting time for students was extended to Oct. 13 to ensure the promised 48 hours was given, Shaw said.

The eight senators elected for Tampa were Muskan Patel, Faria Mohsen, Ashfak Chowdhurry, Joao Magalhaes, Eric Silva-Gomez, Sumit Subhash Jadhav, Linh Khanh Tran and Vittoria Patti, according to Manka.

Elected for the Tampa campus council was Emma Goodwin, Ava Moreno, Kaitlyn Rodriguez and Jackson Jones.

The St. Pete campus had 779 votes cast, according to Manka. Three senators were elected, including Nathan Poinsette, Jack Hernandez and Julia Bailey. Elected campus council members were Erin Turney and Dielle D’lima.

Valeria Ferrari was the only senator elected for the Sarasota-Manatee campus, with Meagan Durinzi and Alexis Santi confirmed as campus council members. A total of 120 votes were received, according to Manka.

There were 35 Senate and 19 campus council candidates for students to choose from at the Tampa campus, Manka said. St. Pete Senate and campus council each had four candidates running, while Sarasota-Manatee had one Senate and three campus council candidates.

Some students who were elected were not the ones who received the most votes, as Shaw said some winners and runner-ups either did not respond in time to confirm their seat or declined the position.