With four GUSA presidential candidates left in the ongoing run-off election, the four who were bounced find themselves in a unique position to play kingmaker, owning a combined 482 first-place votes between them in the original election. While I don’t know of any specific endorsements yet [Ed. Note: Reliable sources inform me that Brown-Sevin will be endorsing Williams-Kesten], the ex-ticket of Sean Hayes and Andrew Madorsky have thrown themselves into the role with audacious aplomb. The pair sent the following e-mail to the remaining contenders, and then also forwarded it to both the Voice and the Hoya:

From: “Sean Hayes” <(redacted)>
To: (redacted)
Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2008 22:26:09 -0500
Subject: Election Endorsement

Alright, so Andrew and I are out….

You have all asked me in the last 24 hours for our support/endorsement and we figured that we, being REALLY cool fun guys, would have some fun with this one.

We WILL, in fact, be endorsing a candidate very soon.

As for the two of us, we have already put in our own personal votes, but we do still have a facebook group with 160 members and don’t forget that smashing 182 we got in the primaries!

Therefore, there is only one fair way to decide who we will endorse.

GUIDELINES:
- No monetary bribes (we are not trying to get in trouble)
- PLAY BALL!

You can find our contact info on www.hm2008.org

So boys, now the question is: What can YOU do for H&M?

Love,
Sean Hayes & Andrew Madorsky

Sure, it’s attention-craving, but that’s not exactly out of line for ex-politicians (ahem, Al Gore). At any rate, it worked. But the question is, with voting already underway, how many of those votes can they actually still deliver?

As the above graph shows, it turns out there’s an incredibly strong correlation between how many members each GUSA ticket’s Facebook group has and how many first round votes they got. Not an incredibly surprising fact when you think about it; the factors that lead to a large Facebook following—popularity, working hard on your campaign, relentlessness—also help bring in the votes. I would make some statement about youth harnessing the power of the internet, but then I’d have to stop reading this blog in protest.

For those of you who’ve taken some kind of stat class, the value for their correlation is 0.968586 (the closer it is to one, the stronger the correlation). For those of you who haven’t taken any stat classes, consider yourself lucky.

You can see how a simple election can quickly become a muddled mess when you add in seven superfluous rounds of voting. For those unfamiliar with instant-runoff voting (IRV), if a single ticket doesn’t get a majority in the first round, the ticket with the lowest total is dropped and those votes are redistributed to the other candidates and so on. It was only in the eighth round that Cartier, fourth in the first round, finally prevailed.

Now, as Juliana Brint reported earlier, the top four candidates will have a run-off election. Karwacki, Hayes, Hawkins and Brown, we hardly knew ye.

The GUSA Senate has decided not to certify the results of the presidential election, instead opting for a run-off between the top four candidates, DW Cartier (COL ’09), Pat Dowd (SFS ’09), Kyle Williams (COL ’09) and David Dietz (COL ’10). The second round of voting will begin Tuesday evening and end Thursday at noon, with the Election Commission hoping to announce the winner by Friday (they will have to wait until after Spring Break to officially inaugurate whomever that is).

Election Commissioner Maura Cassidy (COL ’08) presented the results, which she called “cloudy.” She had to go through eight rounds of IRV in order for any candidate to receive a majority of the vote. She also said there was “an obvious correlation” between candidates’ spots on the ballots (which were ordered alphabetically) and the number of votes they received in the later rounds. The winning candidate, Cartier, did not take the lead until the eighth round.

“I think that it’s much different to say ‘congratulations on your majority’ than to say ‘congratulations on being behind for eight rounds and then picking up 300 votes at the end,’” current GUSA president Ben Shaw (COL ’08) said.

There were also concerns about the instructions to voters to rank all candidates since IRV is supposed to allow voters to rank as many or as few candidates as they like. Cassidy did count the votes of people who voted for the same candidate multiple times, treating the repeat votes as a single first-choice selection.

“IRV is a terrible choice if you have more than four candidates,” GUSA Senator Zack Bluestone (SFS ’09) said. “It’s hard to put ourselves on the line and probably get ridiculed … I don’t think we can certify an election in good faith that doesn’t look indicative [of the will of the student body]. There are too many question marks.”

Cassidy recommended that the Senate not certify the results. They agreed, voting 16 to 2 (with 3 abstentions) to deny certification. During a brief recess, Cassidy, Shaw and GUSA Vice President Matt Appenfeller (COL ’08) crafted a proposal for the run-off election.

The run-off will be between the top four candidates. Cassidy argued that there is a clear division between the top four candidates, who received more than 400 first-place votes each, and the bottom four, who received less than 200. Sean Hayes (MSB ’10) and his running mate Andrew Madorsky (MSB ’10), who placed fifth, protested, calling the cut-off “arbitrary.”

Electronic and in-person campaigning will be allowed, but candidates cannot spend more money or put up fliers or signs. The election commission is planning on putting up non-partisan fliers and setting up voting booths in Leo’s. In the broadcast email that will be sent to the student body each candidate will be allowed to include a 100-word blurb. The candidates will appear in a random order on the ballot and voters will be able to rank as many or as few as they want.

Given the history of GUSA election scandals, some Senators felt that rejecting the results would reinforce GUSA’s negative reputation. They also worried that the run-off election would have a much lower turn-out than the original, which boasted 2,428 votes.

“Are we saying this doesn’t represent the student voice and the next election will?” asked Senator Brian Wood (COL ’09). “I think it would be less legitimate. I just don’t think you’re going to get the student voice.”