In an incidence of remarkable deadlock, the elections for Upper Representative have resulted in two consecutive ties. On Tuesday, Hasan Siddiqi ’07 and Eddie Kang ’07 were elected following a Class of 2007 meeting in front of Samuel Phillips Hall. However, the third representative still has not been decided; in two rounds of voting, no candidate has received a majority. Many Lowers are stunned at how the election has turned out. One hundred and forty-eight ballots were cast in the runoff election held Wednesday in Commons, but they were split evenly between Martin Serna ’07 and James Elder ’07. “Of the 148 ballots cast, four had to be discarded: two were for God, one for Kang, and one was deemed illegitimate because we couldn’t determine who it was for,” explained Secretary of Student Council Yoni Gruskin ’07. Because of the extremely close nature of the election, the Student Council decided not to take any risks in counting the ballots, and they decided to disqualify the indecipherable vote. Gruskin continued, “I think it speaks volumes about the two candidates that in two separate elections, they received an equal number of votes. Clearly the two are both greatly qualified. For all those who forgot to vote, this goes to show that even in an election with this many participants, your vote can make a difference.” Out of PA’s 287 Lowers, only slightly more than half voted. At this time, the Student Council is unsure of what will happen next, as there hasn’t been an election this close in recent memory. Current Upper Representative Claire Collery ’06 said, “In all my experience in Student Council there has never been a double tie. There was, however, in the rep[resentative] election of my Junior year a single tie between Cage Brewer [’06] and Edwin Kulubya [’06].” “It’s still up in the air. We might have another vote at the [class of] ’07 party on Monday. Right now we want to maximize voter turnout and get as many Lowers involved as we can,” said Student Council President Ali Siddiqi ’06. Collery believes that the absence of on-line voting in the election may have added to the confusion. “I think as during the final round of [this year’s] presidential election it is evident that the electoral process is becoming more technologically advanced. I think that this development will make it easier in case there are ties in the future,” said Collery.
