Assemblies Elections

3,944 votes were cast in the spring 2007 student trustee election. The winner was Kate Duch. Votes were counted by the Hare-Clark method, a kind of single transferable vote or instant-runoff voting method. The complete results of tabulation are available here:

• 2007 Spring Trustee Results

Disposition of Challenges

In this year’s election, 7 of the 13 candidates were challenged by other candidates as well as non-candidate students. In total 22 challenges were received. The vast majority of the challenges involved purported violations of various University policies on postering, chalking and campaigning in dormitories. The TNC was unable to resolve 4 of these challenges as the candidate denied involvement and it was considered possible that others could have, for example, created or moved the poster that was the focus of the challenge. Candidates did not contest 3 allegations (for the same offense) of chalking on a vertical surface or campaigning too late in a dormitory. The committee judged that these offenses, in the absence of other violations, did not merit disqualification of the challenged candidates. In the remaining cases, the candidates provided persuasive evidence that their behavior had the necessary approvals or safeguards or did not actually violate the rules. It is important to note that the TNC considers each alleged violation separately as well as the pattern of violations that a given candidate is alleged to have committed by all those who challenged his or her conduct. Our primary concern is whether these alleged violations, separately or in aggregate, could have affected the fairness of the election. We judged that none of the allegations that were supported by the available evidence met this test.