Class Councils elected despite voting mishap

The Committee on Student Elections (CSE) reported the results of the Student Government Association (SGA) Class Council elections on Monday afternoon. Current Junior Class Senator Amy Sun, running unopposed, was elected president of the Class of 2016, and incumbent Syed Hossain, who faced two contenders, was reelected president of the Class of 2017.

In the race for the Class of 2018 president, current President Anna Du faced off against current Senator Alberto “Pepe” Muniz. An error in the vote-counting system necessitated a revote, which Du subsequently won.

The use of quotation marks around the nickname “Pepe” in Muniz’s name on the ballot confused the system, and the votes for Muniz were incorrectly labelled as abstentions.

Chair of the CSE John Corbett detailed exactly what went wrong with the voting software.

“The software just doesn’t always handle names with quotation marks in them very well,” Corbett said. “We have never really put a nickname on the ballot before, and so we assumed it would work out. We got messages from him [Muniz] and from his friends saying that when selecting him and voting it showed up as an abstention. When myself and [Director of Student Activities] Rob Turning got together and tried to figure what was going on, we ran a mock ballot and when we tried to vote, it became an abstention.”

Muniz was listed on the revote ballot as “Muniz, Alberto Pepe” to avoid another malfunction.

Voting was reopened for the Class of 2018 presidential election from 9 a.m. until 11:59 p.m on Tuesday. All those who had voted during the original voting period had to cast a second ballot.

Du won the election with 358 votes to Muniz’s 158. There were 20 abstentions in the revote. Du spoke about her platform and what she hopes to accomplish next year.

“My platform was centered on three main pillars, which are policy, community and academics,” Du said. “Policy was basically about some of the legislation that my team and I really cared about in terms of moving our class forward. One of them is a bill we are hoping to pass soon, the Marketing and Communications bill, that will streamline communication between SGA and the Class of 2018 and all the other classes. It would establish a cohesive marketing branch for SGA and it would be led by Hopkins students who are really passionate about marketing material.”

Du also spoke about the race between her and Muniz.

“No election is easy in my opinion, and I think I was sufficiently challenged. It was a hard-fought election, in my opinion, especially after the voting was reset and concentrated on one day,” she said.

Next year’s sophomore class council will be Sarah Zappone, Kwame Alston, Sathvik Namburar, Lilly Su, Mieraf Teka and Tatiana Sorenson. They were the only six candidates to run for the six positions.

For next year’s junior class council, Hossain was reelected president with 305 votes over Alex Sadler, who earned 155 votes, and Ope Olukorede, who received 147 votes. Charlotte Green, Matthew Brown, Nick McCormack, Liam Haviv, Andrew Phipps and Michael Korn were elected senators, out of eight candidates.

Hossain talked about his proposals for next year’s SGA.

“The most defining aspect was the fact that I was class president this year and what we really wanted to do was create a transparent SGA by always being connected to the student body and being there when they have questions, comments, and keeping them updated through emails and surveys,” he said. “I’m going to continue that next year.”

He elaborated on his specific plans for generating student feedback.

“For example, every month and a half send out a survey to the class to see what they want, a survey with an incentive so that we can get good feedback,” Hossain said. “We did that this year, and we got amazing responses and we actually implemented projects.”

Hossian also spoke about his close election.

“I think elections always help you grow as a person. When there’s competition, you’re always forced to think of better ideas or initiatives you can work on,” he said. “Being class president, you can come up with realistic campaign platforms because you have experience.”

For the senior class, Sun was elected president with 234 votes.  Only four candidates were on the ballot for the six senator positions. Kanami Mori, Saman Baban, Amanda Lourenco and Max Wilde were elected, along with two write-in candidates, Leela Subramaniam and Nadine Abdullat, who received 57 and 30 votes, respectively.

Sun detailed what she and her ticket wanted to do as senior class president.

“Some of the goals we wanted were to ensure student input in the commencement speaker selection process, because that is an integral part of senior year, and increasing transparency within SGA,” Sun said. “I guess also making an increased sense of community within the senior class.”

Sun also spoke about running unopposed in the senior class presidential election

“I think running unopposed, people were like ‘Oh, what’s the point of voting if she’s already going to get it,’” she added. “I definitely wish I had an opponent. I obviously really wanted the position, but if someone did run against me, I would’ve been even more motivated to promote myself.”

She also discussed possible ways to increase voter turnout.

“I think every year the senior class has a lower voter turnout than other classes. I’m not sure if that has to do with a lack of advertisement of the elections going on, because they only send out one email, and I know a lot of people were like, ‘I didn’t even know they had this,’” Sun said.  “One idea that we had for increasing that transparency is creating voter booths for next year, and having a physical station outside the library where people could actually see the names and the ballots and put it in.”