After a revote, Focus Party candidates claimed all three legislative seats representing the Education of College in recent student government elections.
Originally, the results should have been announced March 13, when the election came to a close. Because of an error in the online voting for the college, votes for the College of Education were not counted.
In some cases, candidate names were not appearing on the online ballot, and other times online votes did not go through, said David Martini, the Associated Students of the University of Utah elections registrar.
Jennifer Buhler, who was running for re-election, reclaimed the Education College senate seat with 39 votes, accounting for 90 percent of the turnout. Her opponent, Hannah Hale, earned three votes, and the last vote went to write-in candidate Jenny Rogers.
“It feels good that it’s finally over,” Buhler said. “It was a long road, and we’re glad.”
Buhler wants to use her experience and knowledge to encourage more students in her college to apply for funding.
“It’s still the same groups of people who go to conferences, and we’d like to raise awareness about conferences and funding,” she said.
Nichole Gaisford, Kimberly Sobotka and Morgan Brewer each won the three College of Education General Assembly seats. Each candidate received 39 votes.
“We’re very grateful for the revote and that Elections Committee didn’t let it fall through,” Gaisford said.
Spork Party candidates Melissa Young, Vanessa Vicente and Kate Knight each received three votes. Two write-in candidates, Jenny Jensen and Jenny Rogers, each received one vote.
Gaisford said the failure of the online voting during the election “really sucked,” because the candidates put a lot of effort into their campaign.
The revote was held on March 25 and 26. Altogether, 43 students cast their votes, accounting for 3 percent of the college’s students.
Voter turnout was probably higher for the first election, Gaisford said.”It was hard to wait all Spring Break and keep the motivation and anticipation up,” Buhler said.
During Spring Break, Buhler, Gaisford, Sobotka and Brewer continued to actively campaign by contacting everyone they could and reminding them to vote again when classes resumed. Once Spring Break ended, the four Focus Party candidates kept their campaign going by making classroom announcements and passing out fliers and buttons.
The campaign process was different for the four candidates, Gaisford said. Instead of promoting the Focus Party as a whole, the education candidates were able to talk to students specifically about their college and each candidate’s merit, she said.
Focus’ overall victory in the elections probably did not affect the education college votes, Brewer said. At least half of the students Brewer spoke to during and after Spring Break did not know which party had won, she said.
The U’s Administrative Computer Services is still troubleshooting to find out what went wrong with the original online voting, Martini said.