Turnout for the runoff was almost as high as that of the original race, which mostly people attributed to the decision by the GM Week Committee to offer the traditional beer mug at both elections.

“There was great turnout,” Student Senate Rules and Elections Committee Chair Kim Conway ’06 said, “especially for a runoff election with basically a day and a half notice.” Conway said that when RNE showed up to poll sites to begin set-up at 8:45, there was already a line at the DCC site, and they went through 300 ballots in less than 40 minutes, which she called a “ridiculous pace.”

Total turnout for the runoff was above average at 33 percent, while in the original race it was 38.2 percent, both of which are unusually high. The junior class especially contributed to this high turnout in the original election, but election officials could not provide reasons for this increase.

Conway said that in a typical election, the number of freshman voters is the highest and it tapers off to seniors and then graduate students. This year, however, juniors voted in much higher numbers.

While the results of both elections are generally announced at the GM Week Finale event in the Houston Field House, last Friday’s event saw the results of every race announced, then the announcement by outgoing GM Max Yates ’06 that the election was indecisive at that time.

The reasons for the runoff were not announced at that time in order to prevent the information from possibly tainting the outcome of the runoff election, but Conway said that after multiple machine and hand recounts on both Friday and Saturday, the election was finally ruled to be indecisive because six ballots were unaccounted for at the end of the election, and the margin of victory was less than six votes.

In order to prevent ballots from being lost, ballots are given serial numbers as they are printed, and put into envelopes sorted by number. RNE keeps track of which numbers go to which poll sites, and when the envelopes are opened, the “open time” is recorded on the envelope.

Six is an above-average number of ballots to lose, but not by much.

Five of the ballots that were unaccounted for were sequentially numbered, which, Conway said, made it hard for the committee to believe that they were actually voted on, but were instead never printed due to an error or lost before they were given to students.

But, she said, “because we can’t account for those ballots in any way, shape, or form, we have to count them as lost.” The “lost” distinction is given to ballots that were actually voted on by students and should count toward the election. Since the margin was lower than the number of lost ballots, those ballots could have affected the outcome of the election. “When it comes down to that close, it helps to be able to account for every single ballot,” she explained.

The last time a runoff election was held was 1992, when one was held to clear up potential error in the race for class of 1993 president. The last time a runoff was held for a GM or PU race was 1989, when a runoff was held for President of the Union because neither candidate received the constitutionally-required 40 percent of the vote. In 1972, a runoff was held to determine the GM for the same reason as well as allegations of unethical campaigning that included candidates posting signs and making statements that lied about the other candidates.