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Carson to lead student body, Ortiz VP after second election

Posted on Nov. 18, 2010, at 8:18 p.m.

In the second student government executive election in 21 days, student Sen. Nelson Carson won the student body presidency by 19 votes, defeating former president-elect, Sen. Chris Knoblock 614-595.

Knoblock won a General Student Senate-overturned Oct. 28 election over Carson by 129 votes.

Current Vice President of Student Organizations Anthony Ortiz defeated second-year political science student Ryan Gavin in more convincing fashion, by 114 votes. Little changed, as on Oct. 28 Ortiz also defeated Gavin by 45 votes. Turnout for the second election was drastically lower than the first — 1,326 to 2,025, respectively.

After complaints from students surrounding the lack of availability of FirstClass voting boxes for many, Knoblock, Carson and vice presidential runner-up Ryan Gavin contested the October results, citing other cases of election mishandling by the University of Maine IT department and the Fair Elections and Practices Committee.

The results came in from around 6:06 from a third-party election company called StudentVoice, directly emailed to Fair Election Practices Committee chair Skye Landry, who read the results aloud at the Wade Center in the Memorial Union. Carson, Gavin and Knoblock were in attendance for that announcement.

“I was very excited to have a second chance to prove myself to the student body,” Carson said after the election. “I think the students made the right choice and I’m excited to prove to them why they made the right choice.”

Carson also praised Knoblock’s “honesty” and integrity” to assist in the contesting of the first election, adding that Knoblock “would have done a great job.” Knoblock left the room quickly. declining comment.

Ortiz was excited about being elected, calling it a “once in a lifetime experience.”

“I think I ran the type of campaign that reached out to the students correctly and I think that showed,” he said. “I’m very excited to work with Nelson. I think the two of us are going to do some great things for the students — by and large the most important thing. “

Asked if he had any regrets after the election, Gavin said he wished he tackled allegations that he thought to be lies. He accused Ortiz of questioning his motives regarding challenging the Oct. 28 results.

“The assertion that some of my answers during the [Oct. 21 student body executive candidate] debate were lies — statements that were made by my opponent after the senate decided to redo the election from him and his fraternity brothers about me whining and wanting to do it again — I think were incorrect,” Gavin said.

The election results will be reviewed by the Senate at the next meeting on Nov. 29.

Though he stressed he would not be seeking to contest the elections, Ryan Gavin reaffirmed his belief that the Student Government election process is still flawed. He said he received reports from students that did not receive the e-mail link to StudentVoice’s site to vote.

“I think the message we can take away from the election that just happened tonight was although the technical issues with FirstClass were fixed, the underlying issues with masses of students not being able to vote because their name wasn’t on the list, still occurred today and it needs to be fixed,” he said.

The election results will be reviewed by the Senate at the next meeting, Nov. 29.

Voting was open today from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. on FirstClass. Paper ballots were not offered. Today’s election was handled by an third-party software company, StudentVoice. According to a Nov. 8 article in The Maine Campus, the cost of the new election was estimated at $2,500.

Carson won 46.3 percent of the vote while Knoblock garnered 44.87. 6.71 percent of presidential votes were write-ins, while 2.11 percent of those who logged in chose not to vote for president.

Ortiz won 51.36 percent of the vote to Gavin’s 42.76. Write-in votes accounted for 3.92 percent while 1.96 percent of voters abstained.

Michael Shepherd contributed to this report. Check back with mainecampus.com for updates to this story.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 18th, 2010, 8:18 pm. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.