As all know, the election for Grand Marshal this year was extremely close. The Rules and Elections Committee decided that the original election for the race was too close to call in either direction. The question is: How close is too close? The results for that election were recently announced and Carlos Perea led by four votes while six ballots remain unaccounted for.
RNE decided that because it was possible that those six ballots could be votes cast for Zack Freeman, it would be better to hold a runoff election. Chair of RNE Kim Conway, however, has said that she didn’t think that five of the six missing ballots ever existed. These ballots were sequentially numbered, and thus most likely the result of a printing error. Because of this, it was almost certainly the intention of the student body to elect Perea.
The difference in the turnout between the final election and the runoff election was more than triple the difference in votes between Freeman and Perea in the runoff. It is troubling that there was a significant portion of the student body unrepresented in the runoff. Many students were fed up with having two elections and did not want a third.
The fact that this election is in doubt casts a shadow over the office of Grand Marshal. This shadow makes it more difficult for student government to resolve issues, such as the current mandated changes in student life policy. To clarify the results, the Judicial Board has the right and responsibility to review the decisions of RNE to determine the intent of the students in the final election. This decision should examine reasonable doubt about lost ballots and the process of handling ballots. RNE and the Judicial Board need to examine what failures there were in the system this year so that we do not encounter this issue again in the future.
