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After the first day of voting, candidates for Student Association leadership have received less than half the votes cast last year by the same time. 

As of Monday night, about 2.1% of the student population had cast their votes in the election, which includes the first president and vice president campaign to run unopposed since 2015. After the first day of voting last year, about 4.9% of students had voted. The election needs at least 10% of students to vote for the results to be valid. 

“We only need 10%, but we shouldn’t be shooting for that,” said Brendan Treloar, chair of SA’s Board of Elections and Membership, at SA’s Monday night meeting. “We should be shooting for 100%.”

David Bruen, the current SA speaker of assembly and a sophomore studying political science and policy studies, and Darnelle Stinfort, a junior biotechnology major, are running for SA president and vice president, respectively. Nyah Jones, an SU sophomore studying sports management, is also the only candidate running for SA comptroller.

If Bruen and Stinfort don’t receive the amount of votes they need by the time voting ends on Friday at midnight, SA bylaws allow them to extend voting by 24 hours. If voter turnout doesn’t reach 10% by the end of the extra day, the results will be invalid, and the speaker of the assembly will become acting president until SA can hold another election. Last year, the election ended with 16.2% voter turnout. 

“10% — that’s the constitutional minimum for this election to count,” Bruen said. “We’ve gone near at least 5 percentage points above that, and we’ve been in worse circumstances before.”

SA also passed a bill Monday that allows candidates to request funding from the Board of Elections to be allocated to a campus-wide campaign fund. The fund is available to all president, vice president and comptroller campaigns. Under the new bill, SA allocated $200 to the fund, which Treolar said he hopes will improve voter turnout this week.

SA will also have in-person voting booths set up in the Schine Student Center and on the Quad this week where students will be able to scan a QR code and vote immediately in the election.

Other business

• SA passed a resolution proposed last week that acknowledges students’ increased stress and urges SU to impose institutional solutions, including the option to take classes pass/fail.
• SA’s Community Engagement Committee is collaborating with the New York Public Interest Research Group and the Puerto Rican Student Association to host a clothing drive next week. Students can drop off any clothes they have that are in good condition at the NYPIRG offices between 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. 
• The Community Engagement Committee and the Sustainability Committee are hosting a gardening event at the Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ in downtown Syracuse on May 8. The committees are partnering with InterFaith Works, an organization that works with schools and other organizations to promote discussions about racial and social equity.

Published on April 26, 2021 at 10:54 pm

Contact Maggie: [email protected] | @maggie_hickss