Almost 500 write-in votes for non-Northwestern students were thrown out in Tuesday’s Associated Student Government election — a change from past years when all write-ins were counted.
By not counting votes such as “Robert Goulet” in the total, the election commission shrank the overall ballot pool. Candidates, as a result, appeared to win a higher percentage of the student body’s support than in past races.
A slight change in the wording of this year’s ASG election guidelines means write-in votes for anyone other than NU students in Tuesday’s ASG elections were counted as abstentions.
Gabe Matlin, head of the ASG election commission, said the votes of students who checked the “abstain” ballot, blank ballots and non-student write-in votes were thrown out and did not count against candidates.
Eighty-four presidential votes, 136 executive vice president votes, 79 academic vice president votes and 178 student services vice president votes were thrown out
Abstentions also are not counted toward the total. There were 2,285 abstentions between all four races Tuesday.
Outgoing Executive Vice President Howard W. Buffett said he thought the exclusion of abstentions from vote totals was misleading.
“I know people who abstained because they simply did not want to vote for that particular candidate,” said Buffett, a Communication junior. “I think when you have almost 1,000 people abstaining, it can be read into.”
Matlin, a McCormick senior, said the change makes the election more fair because abstentions and “nonsense” votes do not count against candidates.
Matlin said if the write-in was for a NU student, the vote counted even if the student was not running a write-in campaign.
“For example, if (students wrote in ASG member) Ben Parr, it would count,” Matlin clarified. “But if it was ‘Ben Parr’s mom,’ we would throw it out.”
ASG speaker Dan Broadwell agreed that the change was for the best.
“If someone didn’t care enough to vote ‘no confidence’ or write in a real student’s name, they obviously don’t care if their vote is counted towards the total,” said Broadwell, a Communication junior.
The decision to throw out non-NU student write-ins was implemented with an amendment to election procedures this year, Matlin said. The amendment stipulated that if a candidate lost to a no-confidence vote, a new election would be held instead of ASG appointing a new candidate.
In the 2003 election, Student Services Vice Presidential candidate Adam Forsyth was defeated by ‘no confidence,’ in part because of blanks and votes for fake candidates. The board appointed Tamara Kagel to the post.
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