The story of the SG spring elections continues. The results are in again, this time with a new winner.
On Feb. 21, the unofficial results of the election were posted at 5 p.m. and Ella Tepper was named unofficial president-elect and Jaclyn Broudy, her unofficial VP-elect. Two other candidates — LaTasha Lee, presidential candidate, and Patrick Callahan, VP candidate to Pedro Amirato — challenged the validity of the results because the votes did not add up, according to their contestations.
In order to confirm the results, Assistant Dean of Student Affairs Terry Mena reached out to the third-party voting service, Voter Net Solutions, who counted the votes. As of March 14, Student Government has now received the new results and a new outcome.
By a total of eight votes, the SG president-elect is Pedro Amirato and Patrick Callahan is his VP-elect. The pair beat out Tepper and Broudy by a total of 1399 to 1391.
Amirato is pleased with this new turn of events. “I’m just happy that they finally counted it the way they were supposed to,” Amirato said. “Honestly, I always knew that losing was a possibility, and I was perfectly fine with the idea. I just wanted to know that I actually lost the proper way.”
According to Chair of the Elections Board Michael Brown, the results were inaccurate the first time because of miscommunication with Voter Net Solutions.
“We originally got the points, and that was really raw data. That data had not been tabulated [by Voter Net Solutions] yet,” Brown said.
The new results of the elections were received by the Elections Board on March 1, according to Brown. According to the new results of the election provided by Voter Net Solutions, the miscalculations in the first round of results were due to “human errors.”
Voter Net Solutions could not be reached as of press time to confirm or explain the human errors.
Tepper was surprised when the results of the election changed and she was told that she was no longer the winner.
“In the back of my mind, I kind of knew that with the results being unofficial. It wasn’t all said and done and there was a possibility for things to change,” Tepper said. “I just wasn’t really expecting it to as dramatic as it was.”
Pedro Amirato and Patrick Callahan have been reprimanded twice in the course of this election because they did not properly fill out their campaign expense forms, which list out money spent on campaign material and must not exceed $1,750, and they did not have their sponsors approved by the Elections Board.
According to Brown, these violations are minor and the pair cannot be deemed ineligible based on them.
The Student Court is still hearing appeals to the election and the results of the final vote count. All results are unofficial at this point. Candidates may still be declared ineligible during the course of the appeals.
