Last Tuesday on Election Day, students didn’t just fill out their ballots for presidential candidates. Hoyas also came out to support ANC hopefuls Peter Prindiville (SFS ’14) and Craig Cassey (COL ’15), who both secured spots in an uncontested election.

Cassey and Prindiville will represent Single Member Districts 4 and 8, respectively. Redistricting this year allowed for a second student ANC district. In the past, Jake Sticka (COL ’13) has been the only Georgetown student on the ANC2E commission. Sticka also holds the position of the Georgetown University Student Association’s Chief of Staff.

The turnout this year for these two candidates was unprecedented, with over 100 provisional ballots in ANC2E08 and 61 regular votes for Prindville from students who pre-registered. The provisional ballots have yet to be counted. “It’s remarkable,” Prindiville said. “The Board of Elections ran out of ballots in district ANC2E08 around 2:30 pm and then again at 6:30 pm.”

Prindiville stood outside Duke Ellington High School for six hours campaigning and answering general voting questions. The day before elections, Prindiville reported receiving 65 emails from students asking how to register to vote as a result of a get-out-the-vote campaign he undertook on Sunday and Monday.

The DCBOEE has not yet reported on whether or not the nine write-in votes in ANC2E04 were for Cassey. This information will be posted early next week.  ”I can honestly say that I am both humbled and excited by the opportunity I am about to receive,” Cassey wrote in an email to Vox.

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Though he will give you a stamp, Tucker Cholvin does not have anything nearly as cool as an “I voted for Hello Kitty” pin.

The winding down of the campaign season has spurred the creativity of students like Allie Prescott with regard to party themes. For the record, those seriously considering coming as Comic Sans need not apply.

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Elections are tomorrow, and Vox is providing you today with a series on every dorm’s GUSA candidates. For off-campus representation, three senators are running for five available spots.

Aziz Saqr (NHS ’16): Give us water fountains or give us death

Saqr, a human science major, is running to be GUSA off-campus Senator. The first issue he will address if elected is to add water fountains to the new science building. His main concern would be representing off-campus students’ interests in GUSA.

“I will attempt to work as a connection between on-campus and off-campus students,” he said. “Off-campus students are my priority.”

Aziz sees the fact that he is a freshman living off-campus as an advantage, as most of his friends live on campus. With this he says he can better bridge the two student populations.

Another advantage he says he has over other candidates is his prior student government experience. He participated in student council from eighth grade though senior year. He was successful in getting a student lounge and a senior skip-day. At Georgetown, he hopes to further students’ connection with the school by opening Healy Tower for tours.

His years in student council have also taught him lessons he can use in GUSA.

“Through my years in student council, I’ve realized that the only way to please a majority is through communication and making sure their issues are properly and diligently resolved,” he said.

Aziz is also confident in his ability to present possible changes to the school and argue in favor of them, which will enable him to better represent off-campus students.

“I feel that I have great ideas to bring to the table and I hope to get… off-campus students’ words out,” he said.

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Today, DC Students Speak, YouthPAC, and the DC Federation of College Democrats will host a forum for the candidates running for At-Large DC Council Seat. The date of the election is April 26th.

[Editor's Note: An earlier version of this post incorrectly reported that DC Student Speak's voter registration drive ends today. In fact, only the dorm registration efforts end today. We apologize for the error.]

Today marks the final day of efforts by grassroots advocacy group DC Students Speak to register voters in University residence halls, as the group works towards its broader goal of registering at least 1,000 students to vote in the District by November 2012.

The group was founded in November 2009 to give students a greater role in D.C.’s political process and encourage cooperation amongst university students across the district.

According to Scott Stirrett (SFS ’13), a principal organizer of the drive, the lack of students registered in D.C. hinders the student voice in city government.

“There are 100,000 students in DC, but 98 percent of students aren’t registered to vote in D.C.,” he said.

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Student activities fees are moving on up. Yesterday, GUSA’s Student Activities Fee Endowment reform passed referendum with 1,703 votes in favor and 743 against.

The reform will increase the student activities fee to $62.50 per semester during the 2011-2012 academic year, then to $75 per semester the following academic year. After that, the fee will increase indefinitely at the standard rate of inflation. The whole of the fee will be allocated to student activities, unlike the current policy which allocates half to activities and half to an endowment.

After online polls closed at midnight, Greg Laverriere, chairman of GUSA’s Finance and Appropriations Committee, celebrated the results in a press release.

“The results tonight will affect Georgetown students for decades to come,” he said. “Clubs and organizations on this campus are the big winners tonight.”

Colton Malkerson, vice chairman of the FinApp Committee, echoed Laverriere’s statements.

“It’s a tall order asking students to increase their own fees to benefit student life, but in this referendum the student body stepped up and did what was right,” he said. “The passage of this referendum puts even more responsibility on GUSA and expectations are high, but I’m confident we will prove ourselves and deliver.”

It’s kind of a big deal that Jeff Jones and Michael Savage both filed to run for a seat on Georgetown’s Advisory Neighborhood Commission. Was a big deal, that is.

The contested election, which would have been Georgetown’s first since 2004, is officially down to a single candidate. In an email sent to Voice writer Mark Waterman, Savage revealed that he will not appear on the ballot this November due to a petition snafu.

“On September 7th, fellow ANC 2E-03 candidate Jeff Jones challenged my nominating petition,” Savage wrote. “His audit of my petition showed that not all signees were registered in our Single Member District and were, therefore, ineligible to sign the petition.”

Although Savage’s name will not appear on the ballot, he can still run as a write-in candidate for Single Member District 3, which stretches from the University’s front gates to Wisconsin Avenue and is bordered by Volta and N Streets. He plans to make a decision about a potential write-in campaign “in the next few weeks.”

Vox can think of one ANC commissioner, Bill Skelsey, who won as a write-in candidate. But, he did it while unopposed.

Photo: ANC2E

With current City Council Chairman Vincent Gray having confirmed that he will challenge Adrian Fenty for mayor in 2010, Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans (D), who represents over a dozen nearby neighborhoods along with Georgetown, where he resides, has said that he will run against At-Large Councilmember Kwame Brown (D) to fill the chairmanship that Gray will leave vacant. On Wednesday, when WTOP reported his decision, they said that Evans would get support from Fenty.

Evans is usually credited with the commercial revival that Ward 2 has seen over the last decade. He has been involved in national politics, serving as a delegate at the Democratic National Convention in Denver in 2008, an election cycle where he was initially a member of Hillary Clinton’s D.C. steering committee. As the councilmember for Ward 2 for nearly two decades, Evans enjoys a strong relationship with Georgetown University President John DeGioia.

“In Ward 2, we have worked very closely with Councilman Evans over the course of his career, and there are few men for whom I have higher regard. [Jack’s] been an extraordinary colleague to us,” DeGioia has told campus press.

Although Brown has demonstrated city-wide appeal, and already has the endorsement of Councilmember Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), Jack Evans, who has represented one of D.C.’s wealthiest wards for the past 19 years and enjoys good relationships with the business community, will be a fundraising powerhouse.

“I know how to do it, I’m good at fundraising,” Evans told Voice reporter Juliana Brint in 2008 when he was running for reelection to the Council against his first significant challenger in over a decade. In the course of their brief interview, which took place at a fundraiser for his campaign at the house of Kevin Bacon’s sister, two people slipped into the room to hand him checks.

While Gray cannot return to his chairmanship if he loses his bid for mayor, Evans can continue to represent Ward 2 if he loses to Brown, as he is not up for reelection until 2012. Brown will also resume his At-Large chair if he loses.

D.C. Councilmember and Georgetown alum David Catania (I-At Large)(SFS ’90, LAW ’94) made headlines in 2009 as the man behind the District’s same-sex marriage legalization bill. But Catania, whose third term will end this year, has been keeping mum on whether or not he’ll run for re-election in November, leading some local politics fans to wonder whether the marriage equality victory might be his swan song.

It looks like the speculation can finally come to an end, though: Catania has told “several close supporters” to assume he’ll be running, according to Washington City Paper. City Paper and D.C. Wire also report that Catania will be making an official announcement in mid-January.

In addition to writing and championing the recently-passed same-sex marriage bill, Catania has spent much of his time on the Council working on health care and insurance issues. As of now there is only one challenger for Catania’s seat, Congress Heights minister and civic activist Anthony Motley.

Photo from Flickr user dbking, used under a Creative Commons license.

Tracy Flick for GUSA Senate!

SPECIAL ELECTION RESULTS: The election commission ran a successful special election that culminated in the election of the following senators:

• Townhouses: Matthew Ginsberg with 35 votes
• Harbin 6-9: Clara Gustafson with 46 votes
• Copley: Shaalin Parekh with 52 votes
• Village A E-H: Nolan Johnson with 15 votes

The only apparent glitch was that students in the districts received “about three emails or so” for ballots because of a problem with Hoyamail, according to the election commissioners. Nick Troiano (COL ’11—Village A A-D) thanked the election commissioners for running such an impressive election, compared to last year’s chaotic special elections.

The election commissioners noted there were far more candidates per capita for the special election than the actual election. The Harbin seat had nine candidates, the Copley seat had seven candidates, the Townhouses seat had five candidates, and the Village A seat had three candidates. They said in the normal election, there were 35 candidates running for 34 seats, whereas in this election, there were 24 candidates running for four seats.

GUSA President Calen Angert (MSB ’11) attributed the peak in interest to run for GUSA Senate to the timing of the elections.

“You have to have the Senate in place at a certain time, and I think students don’t have their lives together until a certain time,” Angert said. “I think this was a very good indicator of why there wasn’t a good turnout [of candidates] at the start and why there was a good turnout now. There wasn’t any additional advertisement.”

The new senators agreed with Angert’s reasoning and added that the seats seemed more accessible because no one had the elections “wrapped up.”

GEORGETOWN FUND PLANS: Angert told the Senate there was “nothing super new to report on,” but the senators wanted to hear more about the executive’s plans for the proposed GUSA Georgetown Fund. Angert said the current plans are only a rough outline that have not yet been sent to the Finances and Appropriations Committee, but the Senate discussed several aspects of the potential Georgetown Fund.

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