The Associated Students of Madison Student Elections Committee and Student Judiciary met quorum Thursday and reviewed the results of the 2009 spring elections.
The elections produced an 8.3 percent voter turnout, a 3 percentage point increase from last year. Fifteen percent of the student body voted against the proposed ASM constitution in February.
""I think we were hoping for something closer to the constitution election, just because we got our hopes up that people were really invested because this was advertised better than our previous years like last year, but it is a 3 percent increase from last year and the year before,"" Claire Lempke, member of the ASM Press Office, said.
For Accessibility, Community and Empowerment of Students was a new slate running for ASM this year. The slate's main goal is to strengthen grassroots involvement in ASM by being more transparent and reaching out to other student groups. Eight candidates from the slate won seats in ASM. One of the winners was Kyle Szarzynski, who won a seat on the Student Services Finance Committee. Other winners of SSFC seats were Tim Fung and Michael Romanesko.
The freshman class made up only eight percent of voters, compared to approximately 26 percent of voters who were seniors. Sophomores and juniors made up 23 percent and 24 percent of the turnout, respectively.
Hannah Karns, current vice chair of ASM, will serve as senior class president for the 2009-'10 school year. Kurt Gosselin, former chair of SSFC and member of competing slate Students for Responsible Leadership in ASM, will serve as both secretary and treasurer of the senior class and will serve a second term as a representative from the College of Letters and Sciences.
""This really marks the day for victory for moderate and reasonable students on campus,"" Gosselin said.
The polls for the elections closed Wednesday at 5 p.m., but results were not released Wednesday because the SEC and SJ did not meet quorum. According to ASM bylaws, five SJ justices must be present for the results to be released.
""Eight percent of campus is a really low number, so as always we are going to try to increase our presence on campus and get people more interested in things like elections,"" Lempke said.
Visit the ASM website for full election results.
