Student Union Secretary Herbie Rosen ’12 announced this week that the Union would hold a special election Tuesday for the posts of Mods senator and junior representative to the board of trustees due to a refusal to take the position and a resignation, respectively. Another election for the position of Ridgewood senator will be held after the position failed to garner a candidate less than two weeks ago and was won by the “abstain” option.

“I am urging members of the junior class as well as students living in Ridgewood and the Mods to consider running for one of these positions,” Rosen wrote in his campus-wide e-mail, acknowledging the lack of interest in the earlier vote.

The reasons for the special election are different for each post.

“In the last election, the student who was elected Mods Senator won off of a[n unintended] write-in campaign and refused the post and there were no official Ridgewood candidates,” Rosen wrote in an e-mail to The Hoot. The elected junior representative to the board of trustees resigned.

“Of those who voted in the Ridgewood election, the majority voted for abstain. However, now members of these constituencies have demonstrated a want for representation, and we want to give them that opportunity.”

Article IX of the Union Constitution governs all elections, and treats abstain as any other option for which students may vote.

“If abstain receives the greatest number of votes during a final election, then there will be a vacancy in the office until the next election,” Section 6 of the Article reads.

According to Rosen, “the Executive Board have decided to make the next election now, so that we can best satisfy the needs and wants of students.

“We are adding the Ridgewood and Mod Senator positions to give students a chance to elect their own representatives,” he wrote of the more typical special election for a vacancy, like the one for the board representative.

Concerning the past practice of abstained verdicts continuing until the winter election and the Constitution’s restriction, Rosen, while acknowledging that “the results of this fall’s election clearly showed that abstain won by numbers in the Ridgewood Election,” wrote that he did have the authority to have the student body answer again.

“The term ‘the next election,’ says exactly what it is—the next election. This is the next election.”