This year’s Student Body Officer elections were more involved than last year’s elections. Every position had multiple candidates, and the amount of student votes more than doubled last year’s amount with a total of 1,393 ballots cast on Monday and Tuesday.
With nearly 30 percent of students voting, only three of the four races provided results at Wednesday’s election announcement. Due to no candidates receiving a majority of votes, the position of Speaker of the Assembly will feature a run-off election between Sojourner White and Charles Cohen next week.
Student Body Officer elections feature a simple majority policy, meaning that a candidate must win at least one more vote than 50 percent of the total ballots cast for that position.
It was also a close race for President of the Student Body, with Sarah Handler receiving 662 of the 1,322 votes, the exact minimum number of votes needed for a candidate to win the presidency.
Handler, a junior industrial engineering major, was elected by the narrow margin of 50.1 percent of the votes running against incumbent candidate Jason Blumenthal.
“In general, I believe I was selected for our platform, and one of our biggest things was diversity and inclusion, so we will absolutely be moving forward with working on those initiatives,” Handler said. “It also depends on the results of the run-off election, but [my running mate] Sojourner and I are so very, very committed to improving the diversity and inclusion on campus.”
Handler said she is also looking forward to working with the new administrators and helping make that a smooth transition for students.
“[I feel] grateful of everyone who went out and made their voice heard,” she said. “And [I’m] excited for the next year.”
Hunter Vaughn won Secretary of the Finances and Allie Hoffman won Secretary of the Assembly.
Vaughn, a senior political science and accounting double major, ran against sophomore Brian Ivancich, winning 67 percent of 1,158 votes. He said he was going to continue working on several budgeting issues within Student Senate as well as looking into the university financial aid process.
“I felt pretty confident coming in to it; I know I had a lot of support from the greek community,” Vaughn said. “Obviously, doing this before has helped. Brian had a fantastic campaign, just the marketing materials he used: the posters and handouts. So, I was a little bit worried, but I’ve got to give him huge props.”
Hoffman, a freshman criminal justice studies major, ran against junior Ashley Borja for Secretary of the Assembly. Hoffman won with 63 percent of 1,186 votes.
Next week’s run-off election between Cohen and White will feature voting in the Student Center, via the Brave Life app or online April 13-14.
