Election Day!

No doubt if you've looked at your email, social media, or picked up the Northern Iowan recently you've heard by now that the polls are open! For the love of TC, please go vote. The polls stay open for 36 continuous hours, and are hosted online via MyUNIverse because college students are busy, lazy, and always on the internet. All in all, you have until 6:59 PM Wednesday to cast your vote for your college's Senators, President/VP, and Yes/No on the three ballot issues detailed in Eric Boisen's column here.


I timed myself for how long it took for vote, from logging into MyUNIverse through the finish. I clocked in at just over 3 minutes, probably because I read through everything. So what now?

Well, between now and Wednesday night all we can really do is speculate about which ticket is going to come out on top. Expect the candidates to go all as we get close to the deadline, both tickets were tabling in the Union Monday, the last day they could. Last year, I remember standing out in the bitter cold handing out buttons and packs of ramen with stickers on them about how to vote.

The first question to consider is how many people are going to vote? Considering not very many students participated in the real-life November elections , and that even less typically vote in student government, we don't have much in the way of numbers to work with. About 1400 students voted in elections two years ago, and about 1100 last year, so you vote matters now from than ever.

To get a rough handle on numbers, I put my Stalker hat back on and tried to see what numbers I could get.

(as of 2:49pm Tuesday)

Kate and Renae

Campaign Page "likes" : 374
Facebook event invites: 875
Facebook event "attending": 90

Twitter Page Followers:127
Twitter Following :576
Total Tweets : 33

Katie
Facebook friends: 1684 (+39 since 2/6)

Renae
Facebook friends:533 (+43 since 2/6)



Jared and Tanner

Campaign Page "likes" :327
Facebook event invites: 558
Facebook event "attending": 58

Twitter Page Followers: 125
Twitter Following :503
Total Tweets : 51

Jared
Facebook friends: 455 (+48 since 2/6)

Tanner
Facebook friends: 861 (+38 since 2/6)



Let it be known that Facebook definitely isn't real, and that it's just one way to do social media. For example, I'm not super familiar with Twitter so I don't have any context regarding those numbers. I do see it heating up today though, as I keep writing I have to continuously update these numbers. While Katie and Renae have the current numbers advantage, I think we say that it is way too close to call for now, with over 24 hours left with the polls open. What matters much, much more is how far and wide the tickets have managed to get their message out, and hoping that students will show up in the polling numbers.

I'll be in close contact with Commissioner Nathan Davis to see if anything fun or dramatic happens, and you'll be among the first to know the results once they are announced!