With the second largest voter-turnout in Aggie history, the results for this quarter’s ASUCD’s elections are in.
Election results were announced Friday at 2 p.m. in front of the Memorial Union. Despite the elections website being down from 8 to 11 p.m. Thursday, a total of 26 percent of undergraduate students signed on to vote.
“This election was so unique in so many ways,” said Adam Thongsavat, elections committee chair. “I think this election will decide how ASUCD will function for the next two or three years.“
Independent candidates Joe Chatham and running mate Chris Dietrich won the executive ticket, with 2,839 votes. Chatham and Dietrich claimed victory with 13 more votes than L.E.A.D. candidates Lula Ahmed-Falol and Rebecca Schwartz.
“This is just so amazing and I am so honored that UC Davis students voted for me,” said Dietrich, the first independent vice president in four years of L.E.A.D. executive control. “Joe and I have a lot to learn as independents. It will be quite a transition.“
Of the 15 senatorial candidates, the six elected were A.C.T. member Justin Gold, L.E.A.D.‘s Shawdee Rouhafza, L.E.A.D.‘s Previn Witana, Independent Joemar Clemente, L.E.A.D.‘s Trevor Taylor and Independent Kevin Massoudi.
“I’m ecstatic!” said Witana, senator and third year bioscience major. “I was kind of unsure going into the announcement today because I called about 150 people last night asking them to vote for me, and then the website was down. I thought that would cost me, but it didn’t!”
The ballot measure The Green Initiative Fund (TGIF) lost, with 3,349 votes against the measure. In addition, both ASUCD amendments for the Interviewing Committee Updating Act and the External Representation Amendment passed with a relatively large margin.
All votes have been considered by the elections committee to be fair, despite the glitches the online voting web page experienced. According to Creative Media, the unit that set up and maintains the voting website, the site was in no way “hacked” into, and all problems were due to software glitches.
“We fixed the problem as soon as we found out about it,” said Chris Thielen, senior programmer for Creative Media.
For more information on the ASUCD election, be sure to read Monday’s Aggie.
LAUREN STEUSSY may be contacted at campus@theaggie.org
