PAUL CASEY
News Assistant
Last week’s freshman elections failed to produce a winner for the presidential position because none of the five candidates were able to secure a majority of the votes; the amount necessary to win outright.
To determine a victor in the race, a 24-hour run-off election was held between the top two vote earners in the original election, Kelly McMahon and Louis Boney, starting Wednesday and concluding early this morning.
“They told us that Louis and I were only 10 votes apart,” McMahon said. “I expected a run-off even if I wasn’t in it and definitely expected Louis to be one of the main competitors.”
Boney also expected a run-off and said he thought he and McMahon would be two of the most likely candidates to meet in that run-off.
“My intuition told me that I would be in it,” Boney said. “Kelly’s a great girl and a tough competitor, so I had a hunch it would be her in the run-off too.”
Clint Harp, SGA vice president, was in charge of arranging the run-off election and says the plan is to announce the winner and new freshman president by noon today, barring any technical problems with the voting Web site.
This is not the first time that a run-off election has been needed to determine a race. In the past, races that have been extremely competitive or have had numerous candidates running for one position often went to a run-off to settle the election.
“There was a lot of competition in the freshman class this year and with five people running for one position it’s extremely hard to get that majority needed to win,” Harp said. “We were not the least bit surprised when we realized a run-off was needed.”
It is also common to see specifically the freshman elections go to a run-off. The freshman class has less time to completely get to know their fellow first-year students, which causes the votes to be spread out among the candidates more than in upperclass elections.
“It’s hard as a freshman to come into the school without those established relationships,” Harp said. “That means that at the beginning it’s always hard to tell who will be the frontrunner.”
Unlike the original general elections, which are heavily pushed and promoted to the student body by both the SGA Executive Board and the candidates, the job of raising awareness for the run-off falls solely on the shoulders of the candidates involved.
“We don’t really do anything to promote the run-off,” Harp said. “It’s up to candidates to promote their run-off elections.”
The candidates do so by utilizing the same campaign techniques they did for the first election, just on a smaller scale and at a quicker pace.
“I’m trying to promote it through people,” McMahon said. “I’m telling my friends to tell people they know and so on.”
Besides how it’s promoted, and the fact the run-off lasts only 24 hours, not 48, both the first election and the run-off are exactly the same in how they are run. A candidate can only come out victorious if they can stir up a majority of the votes cast. But because there are only two students running in the run-off it is much easier to get the 50 percent plus one that they need.
Students vote online for the run-off like they did during last week’s elections between all five of the original presidential candidates.
09-20-2007