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Matt Rodrigue won the position of the University of Maine’s Student Government president in the Dec. 2 elections, and Matt Gagnon will be the next vice president.
“First and foremost I would like to thank UMaine’s student body for its tremendous show of support,” Rodrigue said.
Rodrigue received 1,542 votes, or 79.4 percent, while his opponent, Mitchell LaFortune, received only 327 votes, or 16.9 percent of the vote. There were also 72 write-in votes for president.
“With such a significant win, Matt Gagnon and I really have a mandate to continue doing good work for UMaine’s students,” Rodrigue said. “We look forward to implementing programs on the platform we ran on.”
Gagnon received 1,353 votes, or 71.4 percent of the vote. Other vice presidential hopefuls, Bryan Kaenrath and Matt Lafond, received 261 votes and 206 votes, respectively. There were 74 write-in votes for vice president.
“I’d like to commend all the candidates in this race,” Gagnon said. “All had great ideas and a lot of energy, which really made for an interesting and hard-fought election, and I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.”
Rodrigue and Gagnon ran on a joint platform they called “Matt2.”
“Matt Gagnon and I plan to continue implementing change by revising and perfecting the system that is already in place,” Rodrigue said.
According to Fair Election Practices Commissioner Erik Black, there was a 36 percent increase in voter turnout this year.
“Probably the reason why voter turnout was higher this year than last year was because there were two different visions of what Student Government should be,” Black said.
Black said the debate held in Union Central also helped increase voter turnout.
The results will be official when a notary public signs them today. Amy Grant, administrative assistant for UMaine Student Government, will serve as notary public.
All activity-fee paying undergraduate students had the opportunity to vote Dec. 2 either by using the elections icon in their FirstClass folders or in the Student Government offices. However, only two students voted in the Student Government office, Black said.
According to Black, 7,502 students were eligible to vote in the elections. Voter turnout was approximately 25 percent.
Robin Shaler, FirstClass administrator and Help Center coordinator for Information Technologies, set up the First Class voting program, which tallied the number of votes per candidate and who voted. Black said the only complaints were from students who didn’t want the icon in their FirstClass folders.
“There were no major problems this year like there were last year,” Black said. “It seems to have worked really well this year.”
Bangor Daily News