Next Week's Runoff Election

By now, you've seen last night's election results and you know that none of the three tickets were able to get more than 50 percent of the votes. As such, the two tickets that received the most votes (in this case, KaLeigh and Alicia and Tom and Blake) will compete in a runoff election beginning at 8 a.m. on Tuesday, March 5 and ending at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, March 6. Like last night, the runoff election results will be announced Wednesday night by election commissioner Corey Cooling at the bottom of the Grand Staircase in Maucker Union.

There will also be a runoff for one of the senate seats, as senatorial candidates Michelle Czarnecki and Ellie Hail tied with 7 votes for the third and last seat in the Graduate College. That runoff will be held during the same period as the presidential/vice presidential election, but only students in the Graduate College will be eligible to vote in it.

Now, for those of you who are less familiar with NISG elections, the prospect of a runoff might be a new concept, but for those of us who have been around a while, this is business as usual. Runoffs have become something of a regularity in these elections, especially when you have three tickets in the running and it becomes increasingly more difficult for one of the tickets to obtain a majority of the votes.

Last year, current student body president Jordan Bancroft-Smithe and vice president KaLeigh White received the most votes in the first election but were unable to obtain that coveted 50 percent, so the election commission held a runoff election between them and candidates Kyle Burns and Brendan Thompson. But the final result was the same and Jordan and KaLeigh were declared the winners.

There was going to be a runoff election two years ago between Spencer Walrath and Ian Goldsmith and Rhonda Greenway and Adam Beaves, but Trevor Boeckmann (who was one of two writers for this blog at the time) discovered an error in the way the off-campus votes were counted in the first election and, before the runoff could be held, the election commission announced that Spencer and Ian had indeed already won.

So, it was no surprise to this blogger that there was a runoff and now we all have another week of campaigning to look forward to! I'll be posting later today or early tomorrow about what the candidates will be doing in the days leading up to the runoff, so be sure to check back for more election coverage!