Student Council (StuCo) elections for Executive Council president, as well as for freshman class president, vice president, secretary, and Senator for Finance, will be held from 12 a.m. Friday to 11:59 p.m. Sunday.
The upcoming elections will mark the fourth time ballots will be cast for the StuCo Executive Council president, after a series of invalidated executive elections last year.
StuCo has been operating without a president since the beginning of the year. The Board of Elections (BoE) decided last year to hold another presidential election at the beginning of this year, coinciding with the freshman StuCo elections.
Two candidates, seniors Iverson Long and Soren Gandrud, are running for the position of Executive Council president.
The Board of Elections (BoE) has gained several new members for this year. Although the new members cannot overturn the decisions of last year regarding this upcoming election, members of both the BoE and StuCo expressed optimism that the new board will smoothly run future elections.
"I am confident that the new Board of Elections will produce solid and honorable decisions this year," Junior Anthony Paletta, chair of the Committee on Leadership Appointments (COLA), said at Tuesday's StuCo meeting.
"In the present year, we'll see things running considerably smoother than we've had in the past," he added.
However, with elections slated for Fall Break weekend, the BoE is expecting a potential difficulty with voter turnout.
"The decision [to have the elections over Fall Break weekend] was made in July," BoE chair Michael Seibert said.
"We were concerned a little bit about that, that's why we made it Friday-Saturday-Sunday instead of Saturday-Sunday-Monday," Seibert added. "I've received one protest because the election's on fall break weekend, and the Board's reviewing it, but I'm almost positive that nothing's going to come of it."
The voting this year will again occur online, a process that the BoE hopes will lessen the problem of students leaving campus this weekend.
If students will not have access to the Internet over the weekend, the BoE is accepting ballots beforehand through e-mail. Students using this method will need to e-mail boe@jhu.edu with their name, J-card number, last four digits of their Social Security Number and the candidate and position they're voting for.
Seibert said, "My goal is to have them [the election results] released by the Monday after fall break. If we can release them earlier, we will, but if we run into problems, then we have enough time to work them out."
Seibert is optimistic that elections will go smoothly this time around. "The freshmen have been very interested this year and have been asking a lot of questions, which is a good sign," Seibert said. "I haven't received any complaints this far about any candidates."
Another complication is confusion about positions freshman candidates are actually running for.
After the constitutional changes of last year, the treasurer position was abolished and a new position, the Senator on Finance, was created. Misunderstandings led to freshman candidates running separately for treasurer and for Senator on Finance, even though there is no longer a treasurer position. Originally, there was one candidate for Senator on Finance and three candidates for treasurer.
To take care of the mix-up, the four candidates will be lumped into one election for Senator on Finance.
Regarding this problem, Seibert said, "I've e-mailed the candidates ... will it cause confusion? Probably. Hopefully we'll be able to avoid any problems by making the problem clear. On the election Web site, we'll have all the candidates [for Senator on Finance and treasurer] listed, and we'll explain that these are in fact the same position."
When voting, students will see only the position called Senator on Finance, but all the candidates for treasurer, in addition to the original candidate, will be voting choices.
Freshman Harmonie Sahalov, who was originally running unopposed for Senator on Finance, was unworried by the sudden increase in competition.
"It makes it more fun," she said. Even though she had not put up posters originally, with no competition, she has no plans to put any up now. "I'm just gonna go with the flow," she added.
A frequent complaint from students during elections past was a lack of public knowledge that an election was upcoming or currently taking place.
To address that, Seibert said, "I've been trying to e-mail the student body more than has been done in the past."
In addition, efforts were made to find other ways to let students know about the elections, in addition to the usual banners. Seibert added, "We purchased advertisements of a more permanent nature, but got tied up in problems with the company."
At the Tuesday meeting, StuCo was also updated about the progress of the lighting improvement project first presented at last week's meeting. Vice President of Student Life Nattavadee Temkasem, a junior, mentioned three places that had been identified so far as needing better lighting: the area in front of the Bradford Apartment building, the area between Bloomberg and the AMRs, and the area around Shriver.
Further scrutiny will be made into off-campus areas. StuCo aims to give a report to Community Relations Coordinator Salem Reiner by next week.
