Filed under: ASM, Uncategorized, University of Wisconsin | Tags: ASM, Campus Elections, Matt Beemsterboer, Matt Manes, NatUp, Student Judiciary, Union South
The ASM elections concluded last week Wednesday, and now we sit and wait to see if anyone comes forward with election complaints before the ASM Student Judiciary confirms the final vote this week. In the meantime, as we all sip our drinks and wait ever so tension-ridden for the finalization of the first ASM election of the 2010 decade, I have provided some number-crunching breakdowns of this election and some interesting points to note. Full election results can be found here.
1) Total Turnout Figures
Number of votes cast for the NatUp Proposal: 13665
61.13% against - 38.87% for
Number of votes cast for Union Name: 13540 (99.09% of total ballots cast)
Union South: 8738 (64.53%)
Randall: 2311 (17.07%)
Varsity: 1787 (13.20%)
Discovery: 704 (5.20%)
Number of voters casting for Student Council Seats*: 8928 (65.34% of total ballots cast)
* The methodology I used to calculate the total voters for student council seats was to take the number of votes cast in each school or college and divide that number by the number of votes each voter received. For example, L&S voters received 7 votes to distribute but did not have to utilize all 7. However, I calculated total ballots based for L&S based on total votes for L&S divided by 7. This methodology also does not account for those write-in candidates who received less than 10 votes but did in fact receive L&S votes.
2) Percent of Eligible Votes Cast By School
Business: 28.90%
CALS: 25.68%
Education: 30.19%
Engineering: 31.73%
SoHE: 26.44%
Med: 25.32%
Law: 24.68%
Grad: 17.82%
L&S: 22.10%
Special: 0.33%
These are quite impressive turnout totals for each of the schools compared to typical elections. The limited number for special students is not surprising by any means and neither is the lower turnout for the graduate school compared to the rest of the field. Generally speaking, graduate student non-voting drags down overall voter percentage in most ASM elections, and in fact, this election was not exceedingly different in terms of the student council elections.
3) Percent of Votes Cast for Winning Candidates
Only 4 candidates won a straight majority of votes from their respective colleges, and two of those candidates had no opponents with more than four votes (a candidate requires 5 votes to be recorded on the official tally). These candidates were: Sam Stevenson (Med) with 100% of the vote, Lauren Vollrath (Special) with 100% of the vote, Matt Beemsterboer (Business) with 90.84% of the vote, and Cale Plamann (Law) with 65.73% of the vote.
Other notable pluralities include:
Kyle Vandenlangenberg (Grad) with 46.98%
TJ Madsen (Eng) with 42.03%
Brian Diechl (SoHE) with 41.54%
Matt Manes (CALS) with 40.42%
Jeannette Martin (Ed) with 37.48%
Tyler “Catfish” Theobald (Eng) with 36.51%
Joseph Kuo (Grad) with 35.09%
Letters and Science, by its very nature (45 total candidates with 10 or greater votes, 12 of whom are elected to Council) has a very diluted vote percentage with the elected 12 ranging from 6.83% (Andrea Nichols) of the vote total to 3.65% (Kyle Woolwich) of the vote total. Thus, the L&S percentages should be taken with a handful of salt.
4) Other Interesting Facts to Note
Every L&S candidate on the ballot except for Peter Clancy received more votes this year than the 12th L&S Candidate in the Spring 2009 elections. (24 of 25 L&S candidates this year would have been eligible for a Council seat if their vote totals occurred in the previous election)
The same fact is true for every other candidate this year whose name appeared on a ballot for their respective schools. (and for some whose names were not on the ballot)
10 incumbent Student Council members are returning (last year 3 incumbents returned to council)
5 Comments so far
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If you could see someone as Chair and Vice-Chair who would it be? (knowing that it would have to be someone who could bridge the gaps between the MPOWER slate and the others) will you be making predictions?
Comment by Maxwell Love April 19, 2010 @ 4:03 pmMax,
Comment by Matt Beemsterboer April 19, 2010 @ 11:00 pmI would argue that the candidates don’t have to be people who bridge a gap. Obama tried that, and we have seen that the very notion of a leader being capable of bridging the gap is foolish. I would argue, instead, that all members of student council have to be willing to listen to each other and try and make progress where it can be made. Compromises aren’t a bad thing; they are necessary to move things forward.
So the question becomes, instead, will MPOWER members be ignorant in their work on student council if they don’t have their chair in leadership, or will the work to help move council forward by working with the other members of council no matter who are the chair and vice-chair?
-Matt
If your question, Max, is who I anticipate to run for Chair, I’m not as integrated into the ASM election scene this year as in years past, so I don’t know how accurate my predictions will be.
The MPOWER candidate is obvious (as of course you already know). Since Tina didn’t win, the only person MPOWER can put up is Jonah (was on ASM this year, some SLAC bs, etc.)
I also think that Tom has been a front runner for 17th session Chair since October, but there are quite a few people on Council who might be interested in a run, I really don’t know.
Obviously, if we accept the “Jonah experience standard” then Beemsterboer, Ziebell, Williams, Hanley, Manes, Madsen, Fergus, Nichols or Vollrath are also possibilities.
Comment by Beyond the Talking Points April 20, 2010 @ 4:01 amThank you, I didn’t see you had posted this earlier.
Comment by Maxwell Love April 21, 2010 @ 3:48 pm[...] has an election wrap-up and needless number crunching, as he was happy to point out in the comments. As stated before, the turnout was huge, but so was [...]
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