Gabby Daniels is the next Associated Student Government academic vice president.
The Weinberg sophomore won Friday’s run-off election with 446 of the 903 votes cast, just 35 more votes than Weinberg junior Zach Wittchow received, according to the results published by the ASG Election Commission. The remaining 46 votes were abstentions.
“I was very excited,” Daniels said Sunday. “I was just happy that all my hard work paid off.”Daniels said she spent Friday campaigning.
“I went for the kill,” she said. “I really reached out to a lot of people. I just didn’t let up. In the last second it was very close, but I think what made the difference was, I was going door-to-door until about 6:30.”
Wittchow said he was “obviously disappointed” with the results.
“I felt like I had a lot of support,” he said. “In a way, I feel like I let a lot of people down.”
He said he has not given much thought to what he will do next year, though he would like to stay involved in ASG.
“I guess I saw myself taking more of a leadership role, but there are still things I’d like to improve,” Wittchow said.
During Wednesday’s election, neither Daniels nor Wittchow picked up more than 50 percent of the vote, since about 20 percent of the 3,482 ballots cast were “no confidence” votes.
“I thought it would be close,” Wittchow said. “I didn’t think it would be 35 votes close.”Just more than 10 percent of the student body voted in Friday’s run-off.
Weinberg senior Jeff Cao, chairman of the commission, said he had never seen such a low turnout in an ASG race, though those past elections have included a presidential candidate on the ballot.
“We see close elections all the time,” Cao said. “It’s how people voted. My job is to count the votes, not to decide what it means.”
Wittchow said students may think of academic vice president as a minor position, which could explain the low turnout.
“Unless you actually walk up to a person and tell them to vote, they’re probably not going to vote,” he said.
Daniel Hessel said he did not want to make an uninformed decision in the run-off.
“In the other two campaigns, I had a pretty good idea of who I wanted to vote for,” the Weinberg senior said. “In the run-off, I just didn’t. Plus I was just really, really busy that day.”
This spring, Daniels said she hopes to begin the projects listed as her platform goals and “get the ball rolling,” as well as solicit ideas from the student body.
Wittchow said Daniels will do well in the position.
“She has that year of experience, which a lot of people took into consideration for the vote,” he said. “She’s very open-minded. She knows how things are run and she knows the likelihood of certain projects being accomplished.”[email protected]
