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On Oct. 2, 108 students turned out to vote for their representatives in the General Student Senate.
The only contested seats were in the Colleges of Liberal Arts and Business, Public Policy and Health. Eighteen candidates ran for 11 seats in liberal arts and five candidates campaigned for four spots in business, public policy and health.
Fair Elections and Practices Committee Chair Tavian MacKinnon said the voting response represented approximately 3 percent of students in both these colleges.
“Although voter turnout was not high, I think that it was great to see that candidates who campaigned well, preformed well,” said James Lyons, president of Student Government. This was the first time in at least four years that GSS held elections. Until this year, there was not enough competition for any of the seats to be contested.
Twenty-three senators were sworn in at the GSS meeting on Oct. 7 and 12 seats are still available among the colleges of engineering, education and human development, explorations and natural science and forestry and agriculture.
According to current rules, senate candidates that were not elected now have the opportunity to gather signatures and petition for office.
Christopher Harmon, a third-year political science student, has participated in the senate since his first year at the University of Maine. Harmon chose not to run in this election.
“I knew going into the election that my college [liberal arts and science] would be very competitive. I decided instead to just represent a different college.”
Harmon plans to gather the necessary signatures and represent the explorations program.
Senators could not spend more than $100 on campaigns, but most found ways to work with the budget.
Sen. Christina Soyden is the most senior senator, but this was her first experience running for office since she joined senate in February 2006. “I created a Facebook event, sent out a FirstClass e-mail and talked to friends,” she said. Soyden ran for a seat in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
The Fair Elections Practices Commision is required to advertise for the election. MacKinnon said he ran two ads in The Maine Campus and printed 50 posters that were hung in various places on campus.
Voting took place in Memorial Union on Oct. 2 between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. It was run by members of the commission and conducted on paper ballots.
“Since the university has changed to MaineStreet, now you need PeopleSoft ID numbers of every student [to conduct a vote on FirstClass],” MacKinnon said.
He said the ID numbers are private information kept by the Office of Student Records. MacKinnon said this is a new university policy, and it had never been a problem before.
Although there was not enough time to organize an online vote for this election, MacKinnon said the next one, which will be for SG president, will be conducted on FirstClass.
