After weeks in limbo, the Board of Elections (BoE) is poised to hold elections to determine who the next StuCo executive president will be. The BoE will be holding elections on April 18 and 19 for not only the Exec. Board president position but also for all class officer and senatorial positions. The second Young Trustee election will also occur at this time.
The earlier elections were marred by the disqualification and resignation of numerous candidates. Two candidates for president, Eric Wolkoff and Emilie Adams, pulled out of the race and a third, Soren Gandrud, was initially disqualified during the voting process but was allowed to rejoin the race after his second appeal.
Results from the election were withheld during the week following the election while the BoE dealt with an official protest from the Johns Hopkins chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (JHU-ACLU) over the election process.
At the March 2 StuCo meeting, the winners of the offices of Vice-President of Student Life Nattavadee Temkasem, Vice-President of Entertainment Nurain Fuseini, Treasurer Grace Gallick and Secretary Andrew Yates were announced.
The JHU-ACLU wrote a protest to the BoE alleging "improper procedure" as well as "constitutional and/or bylaw conflicts with a BoE decision." The parties could not agree to a compromise regarding the perceived misconduct.
The process was further complicated by the removal of Rick Aseltine, one of the two BoE co-chairs, for violating university policy specifiying that he needed to be a full-time Homewood campus . Eventually the remaining BoE members decided to throw out the original votes for the Executive Board President.
In an e-mail sent out to all undergraduates on March 29th it was announced that there would be a new election for the office of Executive Board president. This re-election will coincide with the previously planned class office elections.
Elections will again take place online at http://www.stuco.org/vote. Despite an earlier problem with the company behind the voting program, IRC Resources, Matt Bouloubasis, a BoE co-chair, said, "Students will be voting online exactly as done in the past. There is no change."
The recent first round of Executive Board elections resulted in record voter turnout among Homewood undergraduates. At the March 2 StuCo meeting, the BoE announced that 1041 votes were tallied, which amounted to a voter turnout of 13.51 percent.Bouloubasis reports, "Due to increased voting during class officer elections, we are hoping that this will carry over and that we can get about 1,200 voters."
There will be voter information meetings beginning this Friday, April 2 at 5 p.m. in Garland Hall. A second session will be held on Saturday, April 3 at noon in the Great Hall. The rules meeting will be on April 9 at 5p.m. at a location to be determined.
