A.S. election results announced
After a two-week delay, a new Associated Students board, headed by President-elect Harrison Wills, was selected after a special meeting was conducted by an Election Committee this past Friday to resolve whether certain candidates had violated the election code in their bid for a seat on the board.
Although the four hour-long deliberation process determined one campaign worker and one candidate, Mackenzie Beckett, to be in violation of the code, the Election Committee ultimately passed a motion allowing violators to go unpunished.
Beckett, a write-in candidate running for Director of Student Services, was designated to having violated items three and four of section IX, concerning polling procedure, in a unanimous vote against her. She was found to have violated the minimum distance rule stipulated in item three which states "there must be a minimum distance of 8 feet between the candidate or campaign worker and the user of the personal computer when a vote is cast to ensure the voter's privacy," and failed to appropriately register her iPhones for campaign use. As a result, Becket was suspended from campaigning during the voting period for one day.
Arthur Rodriguez, a campaign worker for Harrison Wills, was also found to be in violation of the minimum distance rule.
The items were the basis of all six complaints filed and addressed at the meeting.
"There have been some voices that are saying we should just prohibit laptop computers," said Leo Leung, Inter Club Council Chair, addressing concern over future polling procedures. Leung explains that part of the success with voting this year was a direct result of using personal computers, since there are only two designated polling stations that are accessible to the Internet. There will be a future meeting with next year's committee to discuss solutions to this year's laptop problem.
With no candidate disqualifications, election results were determined by the amount of votes each candidate received. Wills received 58.6 percent of the vote to defeat David Stavis for the Presidency. In addition, Joshua Scuteri won the Student Trustee seat with 45.7 percent of the vote, and Jasmine Delgado was voted Vice-President with 64.2 percent.
Beckett only received 26 percent of the vote, losing out to her main opponent Hua Diao, who originally filed the complaints against Beckett, and had complaints filed against her in retaliation.
The winning candidates were Brenda Villafana for A.S. Secretary, Dian Chen for Director of Budget Management, Hua Diao for Director of Student Services, Leslie Estrada for Director of Activities, D.J. Davids for Director of Publicity, Cameron Espinoza for Director of Student Outreach, Jessica Chuan for Director of Financial Support, Marco Vivero for Director of Instructional Support, William Sun for Director of Academic Support, and Marjhonny Torres-Nativi for Director of Sustainability.
"I'm proud of everyone who ran, whether they won or not," said Tiffany Inabu, A.S. President. "This group is great because it's a mixture. There's eight from Harrison's slate and five from David's slate, which is going to really emphasize that it doesn't matter what your beliefs are, because you have to have the student's best interests at heart."
I just want to say I think it was a fair election," said Becket. "It was fair until the 7th, when I was stopped [from receiving votes]. I lost the entire day; I would have been there the entire day, getting votes."
The new A.S. directors will step into their new roles by July 1.
According to Tobias Deml, A.S. Director of Publicity, over 10 percent of the student body voted this year, a total number of 3,767 students, and a new record for voter turnout at Santa Monica College.