Rescheduled elections to start April 16

Two candidates remain for the student government elections after the elections were postponed last month because the Elections Board did not keep required records.

The Elections Board has been plagued with difficulties over the last few months, after major turnover including the consecutive loss of three Elections Board chairs in one month. The board also found that it had violated the student constitution by not keeping records of candidate orientation attendance.

The online-only elections, accessible through banweb, will now start on April 16 at 8 a.m. and last through April 20 at 7 a.m.

Debates among those running for student government positions will be held next week. SFC chairs and members, and student senators will debate Tuesday, April 10 at noon in Parkway North. Presidential and vice-presidential candidates will debate Thursday, April 12 at noon on the stage in the Park Blocks, weather permitting.

The election will not use the Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) system this year because only two candidates are running for president and vice president. IRV was adopted two years ago and enacted last year to encourage more candidates to enter the race.

IRV is used when there are more than two slates running. If no slate has a majority of the votes, the slate with the lowest number of votes will be removed from the race and voting will start over until a slate receives a majority.

Current chair of the board Ethan Gross said it would have been nice to have the voting system, but it’s going to be an “effective election” nonetheless.

Without the record of orientation attendance, the board was forced to postpone the elections until the third week of spring term. Gross said the redo election process is running very smoothly after the early rough patch.

“I am excited that we are going to be having a election and in a way relieved,” Gross said.

All previous applicants were forced to reapply, but that has not been a problem, Gross said. Most applications were received by the time of the first candidate orientations this last Tuesday, with a few more turned in Wednesday. The board discarded all previously received applications.

“This time around we are being doubly cautious,” Gross said. “I’m very confident that we won’t be running into similar problems.”

Former presidential candidate Dalton Higginbottom and his running mate Seth Angove were forced to drop from the race after it was found that they did not meet the minimum credit requirements to run.

A handful of Student Senator candidates dropped from the race after the postponement, Gross said.

The two major presidential candidates and their vice-presidents remain in the race.

Gross has only been in his position a month, along with the two other Elections Board members. Gross took over as chair after former chair Ethan Berleman resigned from the position after only two weeks in the job.

Berelman’s predecessor, Robert Stanley, resigned because he was arrested for assault on Feb. 22.

Presidential candidate Rudy Soto, a current SFC member, said he thought initially that postponing the elections would hurt his chances of winning. Now, Soto says the extra time has actually helped his campaign, giving him more time to campaign and garner support.

Soto said the postponed election has given him a new level of confidence and the problems he ran into made him a stronger candidate.

“It was hard for us to have spent a lot of the money we’ve fundraised and time away from classes,” Soto said. “Having that be our focus and having it all just kind of get brushed aside. It was a lot of hard work getting to that point, but it made us stronger absolutely.”

He said the recent election difficulties and inefficiencies within ASPSU are reasons he thinks more people will vote in the election.

“Students are paying attention to what’s going on and I think it will help turnout,” Soto said.

Presidential candidate Patrick Beisell said spring break gave him and his slate time to rest and not campaign for a few weeks after the first stressful election cycle. He said a few student senators on his slate have dropped out of the elections.

“They wanted to graduate instead,” he said.

Beisell said he is getting into an election groove and the false start of the elections gave him a chance to test the waters, which he said show that he will be victorious.

“I feel like we’re going to win,” Beisell said. “I feel really confident in our chances of the way we set up our campaign.”

With debates and elections coming up soon, Gross said there is still a lot of work to be done, including heavily advertising the election to students.

“It’s really a shame that students haven’t turned out in the past to vote,” Gross said. “Hopefully that’s something that will be remedied in this election.”

All PSU students can log onto their banweb account to vote in the election. The election will be online only.

Elections:

Polls are open at 8 a.m. Monday, April 16 and will close at 7 a.m. Friday, April 20.

Candidate Debates:

SFC and senator: Tuesday, April 10 at noon in Parkway North.

Presidential debates: Thursday, April 12 at noon on the stage in the Park Blocks, if the weather permits. Smith Memorial Student Union, Room 238 is reserved in the case of poor weather.