The preliminary results are in for the San Diego State Associated Students General Election. The Spring 2011 voter turnout was low at 11.1 percent. Cody Barbo has been voted the new president and Darin Ruiz was selected as the executive vice president.
Krista Parker and Mina Azim, who both ran unopposed, have been chosen to fill the vice president of external affairs and vice president of university affairs positions, respectively. Rob O’Keefe, former College of Arts and Letters representative, will be the new vice president of finance.
Current vice president of finance, Amanda Pascoe, is confident in her replacement’s abilities. “I know Rob well and know that he will continue to make A.S. funding accessible for students and student organizations” Pascoe said. “He has the drive to continue the work that has been done over the past several years.”
Barbo and Ruiz have been attending A.S. Council meetings during the past few weeks, but otherwise their experience with this council is limited. Next year will be their first hands-on governing experience with with A.S. This year’s entire executive council will be gone in the fall.
Other school representatives include, from Arts and Letters: Tom Rivera, Channelle McNutt and Elizabeth MacKinnon; from Professional Studies and Fine Arts: Bethany Scribner, Amber Neukum, Nick Warner and Kristin Sword; from Health and Human Services: Samantha Morcos and Paul Contreras; from Engineering: Joshua Bielik and Racha Lwali; from Business Administration: Cord Claffey, Eric Anderberg and Mitchell Blevins; from Education: Gloria Morales and Kaley Kent; and from Sciences: Paulina King, Alana Brooks and Alex Arena. John McMillan was selected as the Graduate Student Association president and Jessika Seekatz is the unclassified studies representative with one write-in vote.
On March 22, Kris Korsgaden, also known as “Buk Fidy,” was disqualified by the Elections Committee but still managed to garner 3.3 percent of the presidential vote. Elections Committee Chair Juliana Todesco said that because the election code does not specify what to do in the case of disqualification of a candidate, votes for Korsgaden continued to be counted even after the committee voted to oust him from the race for multiple code violations. His name was never removed from the electronic ballot through Web Portal because once it went up, she said it couldn’t be taken down.
Todesco was able to get a last minute email sent out on March 24 to students stating that previous PSFA candidate Jennifer Simpson withdrew her candidacy. Simpson withdrew the same day Korsgaden was disqualified but she said the situations were handled differently as there was a chance Korsgaden could appeal.
According to Todesco, the Elections Committee will soon meet to revise its elections code to adopt a procedure for how to handle future disqualifications such as Korsgaden’s.
The A.S. Council is expected to approve the final results at its weekly meeting at 3:30 p.m. tomorrow in the Parma Payne Goodall Alumni Center.
