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Current University of Maine Student Government president Anthony Ortiz was re-elected on Oct. 27 with 60 percent of the votes. Former Sen. Rebekah Dunham, the other candidate, received 34 percent of the votes.
Amidst talk of celebration, Ortiz said, “I’m very happy to be re-elected so that we can accomplish some of my goals, and I want to congratulate Rebekah on putting out a really, really solid campaign. She did a good job.”
“I wish him the best of luck and thank everyone who voted for me,” Dunham said.
Ortiz constructed his platform on student advocacy, dining, parking and fiscal responsibility.
“If re-elected, I plan on increasing this outreach through a series of ‘fireside chats’ not unlike [former United States president Franklin Delano Roosevelt], where I will go around to individual residence halls and discuss the issues facing the students. For the off-campus population I will hold them right here in the Union,” Ortiz said before the election.
“I will continue to work with auxiliary services to improve issues regarding on-campus dining,” he said, adding, “I would like to delve back into and solve issues with parking.”
Ortiz said he would focus primarily on parking at the New Balance Student Recreation Center.
According the UMSG rules of succession outlined in Section 6 of the Constitution, and barring resignation or impeachment, the Senate Pro Tempore, Sam Helmke, will be the new president after Ortiz graduates in May, as the other members of the cabinet will also graduate.
Unlike last year’s problematic election process — when there were two elections after the first was marred by issues with FirstClass that hampered student voting — Chair of the Fair Elections Practices Commission Raymond Updyke said that this year there were “less than 10 complaints and all were fixed.”
According to Updyke, there were 2,407 votes cast in total, 143 or 6 percentof which were write-ins. Ortiz received eight of those, and the commission threw out the paper ballots of two voters who voted on FirstClass as well.
Write-in votes included Boba Fett, Muammar Gaddafi, SpongeBob, Bananas the Bear, Bruce Wayne, “Ron Paul 2012 baby!,” Hugh G. Rection, Stephen Colbert, several variations of Anthony Ortiz’s name, Slater Claudel and former student body president Nelson Carson.
