I didn’t think much of GUSA President Pat Dowd when he was running. Neither did the Voice editorial board, which endorsed his opponents. With GUSA Summer Fellows coming together so soon and his pretty good response to our latest crimes, though, I’m feeling better about his reign.

Things will change, though, and probably for the worse. It’ll be hard to keep track of whether Pat Dowd’s better or worse than we expected him to be. That’s why we’ve come up with the Dowdometer, a device to measure whether he’s exceeding (admittedly low) expectations. So far, things are rosy. But who knows what next semester will bring?

A year after GUSA Prez Ben Shaw and Veep Matt Appenfeller pledged to get free newspapers on campus and a month after the planned date for their Georgetown debut, the papers have finally arrived on campus. Sleek tan distribution boxes are now set up in Alumni Square and Red Square (and, supposedly outside Leo’s and in Leavey, though I haven’t seen these ones yet). Just slide in your GoCard, pull down the door and help yourself to as many New York Times, Washington Posts and USA Todays as your little heart desires.

The papers have come in the nick of time for Shaw, who told the Voice in January, “If the newspapers aren’t here by the third week of February, anyone who wants a Washington Post can come find me and I will buy it for them.” Nevertheless, props are in order for GUSA for finally accomplishing something substantive (and the Corp and, lest we forget, InterHall feat. Caitin Chen). I’ve got to say though, having free papers on campus isn’t as great as I thought it would be. I’ve become so accustomed to getting my news online that when I snagged a NY Times on Monday, it felt unweildly and a little bulky (and, unlike the constantly updated Times website, was missing any mention of prostitutes, New York governors or potentially unsafe sexual acts).

Though the program is run by USA Today, it seems like that’s the last paper people want to grab (see photo). (Maybe Obama was just trying to be nice when he called USA Today a “respectable paper”?) Judging from what I’ve seen, people also seem to prefer the Times above the Post.

The million dollar question, though, is whether or not the deal includes the Sunday Times. I’m guessing it doesn’t—this would be too good (and expensive) to be true—but until Sunday rolls around, I’m going to keep my fingers crossed anyway.

Photo by Sam Sweeney, Blog Editor

The Election Commission announced tonight that Pat Dowd (SFS ’09) and James Kelly (COL ’09) won the run-off election and will be the next GUSA President and Vice President.

After three rounds of instant run-off voting, Dowd received 1,304 of the 2,549 votes cast. Runner-up Kyle Williams (COL ’09) received 1,070. D.W. Cartier (COL ’09) and David Dietz (COL ’10) finished third and fourth, respectively.

In the meeting in which the results were announced, Dowd reached out to the other candidates and said he wanted them “to be part of what we’re doing.”

“Definitely the first thing we want to do is meet with the other candidates,” Dowd said after the meeting. “[We want to] sit down with them and make sure their voice is heard.”

The run-off election was called after the GUSA Senate voted to deny certification of the first election’s results, based on problems with the confusing ballot, improper application of instant run-off voting, and the correlation between alphabetical order on the ballot and the number of votes received in later rounds.

“Whoever wins can be said to have the clear voice of the student body behind them, and will be a stronger force for change on behalf of the student body because of it,” GUSA Speaker of the Senate Eden Schiffman wrote in an email earlier today. “The runoff included a more manageable ballot, IRV correctly applied, and even higher turnout than the original vote, and has been, from all indications so far, a complete success.”

All eight candidates agreed to a run-off between the top four, according to Election Commissioner Maura Cassidy (COL ’08). However, Sean Hayes (COL ’10), who placed fifth, and D.W. Cartier (COL ’09), who won the first election, later raised objections.

Photo by Juliana Brint, Associate News Editor

If you made it through the nine rounds of IRV voting in the first election, you probably noticed the Exit Poll GUSA tacked on to the end. GUSA Speaker of the Senate Eden Schiffman said the poll was an effort to figure out who was (and was not) participating in GUSA and what was most important to them.

The Freshman and Sophomore classes cast the most votes—31% of voters were Sophomores, 29% were Freshmen. Blame it on being jaded or simply smaller class sizes, the Junior class accounted for only 20% and the Seniors were a mere 12% (7% didn’t respond).

Voting was pretty estrogen-heavy, even if the field of candidates wasn’t. 49% of voters were female, 42% were male (9% didn’t respond).

The racial breakdown was a pretty accurate reflection of the University’s composition. The participation rates for minorities were slightly higher than their percentage of the student, body, but not significantly so. 67% of voters identified as White (non-Hispanic), 7% Hispanic, 8% African-American, 9% Asian, 7% Other and 12% did not respond. According to statistics on the University website, 6.4% of students are Hispanic, 6.7% are African-American and 8.7% are Asian.

The biggest determinant in who people voted for was face-to-face meetings (56% of voters checked that box), followed by candidates’ platforms (34%). Club and Paper Endorsements came in last, influencing a measly 13% of voters. So much for the power of the Fourth Estate…

Some took the free-response “What are you looking for in your candidates?” question as chance to engage the time-honored Georgetown past-time of GUSA-bashing—one response was “Inability to deal with simple problems and overall ineptitude”—but most answered pretty earnestly. Common themes were leadership ability, dedication to the job, charisma, enthusiasm, experience, honesty and the ability to represent students and communicate with administrators.

There was a split between those who wanted the president to address the school’s alcohol policy—“alcohol policy reform” was one of the most common phrases—and those who wanted to move past it, i.e. “Someone who seems to understand there is a world beyond the alcohol policy.”

It looks like the national presidential campaign trickled down into GUSA race a bit. One voter wanted someone with “the strength to lead in this post-9/11 world, while others were looking for “change I can believe,” “Someone who can bring change. Like Matt Appenfeller. Yes we can .. hope” or, to put it bluntly, “A president that is like Barack Obama.”

A few wanted a nominee who would channel past-presidents—“Ben Shaw Re-incarnated” or “twister 2.0, someone with a cool name.”

Here are a few of my other personal favorites:
“Attractiveness, Promiscuity, Drinking Habits, and Religion”
“Being a sweet bro and magical powers”
“Chicken, Bacon, Cheese, Onions, Peppers, Bread, Barack Obama”
“feathers and ability to count. Seriously. No, seriously.”
“Height, Hair and Optimism.”
“Someone who is chill and not a pinko, gay loving, anticatholic communist”
and, finally, whoever wrote “The Voice’s endorsement is key”

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.”