Chalk designs in front of the UMC encouraging students to vote in the CUSG election. Apr. 9, 2018. (Fiona Matson/CU Independent)
The CUSG preliminary election results released as of 9 p.m. Thursday night show the Ignite ticket first in the tri-executive race, with Empower in second and Bold in third. A total of 6,390 voters participated in the election, making it the highest turnout since the 2013 election.
The representatives-at-large are a little more interesting: none of the top four are from Ignite. Bold takes up the first and fourth spots with Emmanuel Byarm and Rohan Peddi, respectively. Empower takes up the second and third spots, with Dawn Bulbula and Ryley Day. Ignite’s Emma Perkins-Johnson is in the sixth spot.
It’s worth noting that the election operates on an approval vote system, which allows voters to choose multiple options at once and as many as they want. This means that while 39.6 percent of voters chose Ignite’s tri-executives, many of those voters chose other tri-executives as well.
It’s unusual that the tri-executives are from tickets other than the highest-voted representatives. Election Commissioner Alexa Donner said that’s not a concern, though, and was happy that so many students participated, with the voter turnout hitting 20.5 percent. The election came the week following the chancellor’s attempt to reduce CUSG’s financial oversight by over 90 percent, which hundreds of students protested.
“This really empowered student voices and made them heard,” Donner said. “Hopefully, once we certify the results, these new leaders will take us somewhere new.”
On top of the tickets, the proposed amendment passed on a super-majority of almost 85 percent of voters. It will update CUSG’s anti-discrimination policies and lower the threshold needed for the student body to amend the Constitution. Gabriel Elbert, senator for the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences and author of the amendment, considered it the “crowning achievement” of his time involved with CUSG.
“There’s a clear mandate from the student body that this amendment is something they wanted to see pass,” Elbert said. “I’m ecstatic that this was able to happen.”
These are just preliminary results. The election process has at least another week to go due to infraction hearings. Since infraction complaints must be filed within 48 hours of the possible infraction, the last complaint can be filed by 8 p.m. this Saturday. Additionally, the tickets’ expenditure reports are due Monday. Complaints about those can be filed as late as Wednesday.
The infraction hearing next Wednesday will address all complaints. The election code outlines the actions that count as violations, split into three categories, and how many points each are worth. If a candidate or ticket gets ten points, then they are disqualified. Donner said that she thinks “there will be shifts” between the preliminary and final results based on infractions.
Contact CU Independent Multimedia News Editor Lucy Haggard at lucy.haggard@colorado.edu.
