Despite technical difficulties plaguing the voting process, NIC will see the winners of the ASNIC spring election sworn into office on May 14.
Benaiah Cheevers was elected president by a margin of 50.5 percent, and Joshua Brands was elected vice president with 55.56 percent of the vote.
Richard Fortman, Andy Hughes, Israel Nehemiah Musonda, Josh Swan, Alex Rodal-Cubillas, Tre’ Keough, James Duram, and Bob Mertens will fill the eight senate seats.
Chris Deane, current ASNIC president, said a coding error in the program used to tally votes made the count for two senate candidates indecipherable.
Although Cheevers and Brands were notified of the results of their respective races, a new senate election was scheduled for the following week before being cancelled.
“One of the candidates decided over the weekend to drop out so it was a moot point at that time,” Deane said. “After that it didn’t matter because we had eight positions and only eight people running.”
Deane said the error did not affect the presidential race, where each of the over 530 votes were individually counted and triple-checked for accuracy due to the close nature of the race.
“There is no error there,” Deane said.
Deane said the two races saw a higher turn out in voters than last year’s spring election, something he attributed to aggressive campaigning by the candidates, which even included large messages scrawled in sidewalk chalk throughout the campus.
“They came out of the gate so hard and so fast [during campaigning],” Deane said. “I knew it would be really close, but not that close.”
Deane said the results of the one percent difference in the vote came as somewhat of a surprise.
“She fought so hard,” Deane said. “I had no clue how that was going to go. I really felt like Azra was going to take it, but I was really happy for Benaiah.”
Deane said he’s ultimately pleased with the results overall, however.
“I was thrilled,” Deane said. “I’ve worked with [the new senators] a couple of meetings and they’re absolutely great. They’re ready to jump in and they have a lot of great ideas and they all seem really excited. I feel really good about it; they’re all really neat.
