According to the Union Chief of Elections, Neal Ludevig ’08 won Tuesday’s election for Justice of the Union Judiciary, while the election for Senator for Off-Campus students will continue because technical difficulties prevented write-in votes in the initial primary round.
Instead of the scheduled final round, Tuesday was a second primary in the race for Off-Campus Senator.
According to Chief of Elections Nelson Rutrick, the final round between Michelle Blanter ’10 and Nathan Goldstein ’09 will be held in the next few days.
Goldstein waged a successful write-in campaign on Tuesday to qualify for the final.
“Final elections will be held in the next day or two, depending on the Union Judiciary decision about when it can be held,” said Rutrick, who is designated Chief of Elections due to his position as Student Union Secretary.
“[The UJ] has to approve any change to the election timeframe,” he added.
In the race for Justice of the UJ, Ludevig defeated Danielle Shmuely ’10. Of the 525 votes case, 251 went to Ludevig, while 226 went to Shmuely, a difference of less than five percentage points. 48 voters, nine percent of the total, voted to abstain.
During the election for Justice of the UJ, there was a window of about twenty minutes in which the election website, www.bigpulse.com, was not working correctly.
However, it was determined by the Union Elections Commission that the results should stand, due to the short time that the election system was down, and because the problems affected both candidates equally.
“The elections commission has taken a serious look at the problems of www.bigpulse.com and how it has affected your election,” wrote Rutrick in an e-mail to the candidates.
“Less than twenty minutes total existed throughout the course of our twenty-four hour voting period in which any voting problems whatsoever existed,” he added.
“Any website disruption from www.bigpulse.com that occurred equally affected both candidates,” continued Rutrick’s e-mail. “There is no reason to believe that one candidate was disproportionately affected by this problem.”
Ludevig won elected office in the student government for the first time. His term will last one semester, and an election to determine his successor will be held in the fall.
Ludevig is replacing former Chief Justice Jamie Ansorge ‘09, who resigned from the UJ to spend the semester abroad. The UJ has not yet determined who will be the new Chief Justice.
“I think I’m good at talking to people, solving problems, and I think I’m pretty objective,” said Ludevig. “To be honest, I’ve never done anything like this before.”
“I hate campaigning,” he added. “I absolutely hate it. I was just trying to do it in the nicest way possible.”
