Newly elected officials are moving past a campaign season with heated discussion on some campuses and low participation on all.
Of the more than 70,000 graduate and undergraduate students at ASU, fewer than 4,000 voted in elections one week ago. Most of these elections were decided by only a few votes.
Only 843 students voted to elect 2012-13 Tempe Undergraduate Student Government President Mark Naufel, a finance and computer information systems sophomore.
While the number of students who vote in student government elections has been low in past years in comparison to the student population, this turnout was lower than usual.
Tempe USG Elections Director Derrik Hester said in an email the low turnout made sense because the election was uncontested.
“Voter turnout seems to be proportional to how many executive campaigns there are,” Hester said. “Also, with just one ticket running, there is far less urgency for its constituents to vote, as the lack of competition or choice in the election might entrench voters into passivity.”
Roughly 3,000 students voted in each USG Tempe election in 2008, 2009 and 2011, when two executive tickets ran. In 2010, when four executive tickets ran, about 6,750 students voted.
In contrast, this year saw more than 1,000 students voting in the Graduate and Professional Student Association election.
Between 2008 and 2011, the highest number of graduate student voters had been 359 in 2010.
Hester said this likely happened because GPSA tickets have been uncontested in the past, but each of the four executive seats was contested.
“For me, this year's voter turnout is evidence that when there are multiple tickets running multiple campaigns, more voters will be contacted by those campaigns and more people will be inclined to vote,” he said.
Current members of GPSA and candidates, including incoming GPSA President and anthropology graduate student Rhian Stotts, campaigned for higher student participation in elections throughout the campaign season.
Stotts won the presidency by 17 votes. Each of the other GPSA executive positions was nearly as close.
The Downtown campus campaign season was full of violations this year, as it has been in the past, but it also saw the most decisive voting numbers.
Nonprofit leadership and management sophomore Erika Green was disqualified shortly before polling began for failing to list a whiteboard she had used in her campaign as a campaign expense.
Her name remained on the ballot, though, and the Undergraduate Student Government Downtown Judiciary Board overturned her disqualification shortly after the polling period ended.
Green lost to incumbent USGD President and criminology junior Joseph Grossman by 150 votes.
Grossman faced three violation accusations, but the USGD Elections Committee dismissed each.
He responded to allegations of campaigning early by declining to appoint members of the judiciary board, creating an unauthorized polling place by creating a Facebook event for a party at his house, and not attending a mandatory candidate’s meeting.
Elections on the West and Polytechnic campuses were quieter.
Political science junior Luke Webster beat political science sophomore Zeke Reed with 283 votes to Reed’s 267 for the presidency on the West campus.
Webster said he hoped to work with Reed during the next year.
Each of the 219 Undergraduate Student Government Polytechnic voters chose food industries management junior Jeffrey Hebert, the uncontested USGP presidential candidate.
Staff positions and vacant legislative seats will be appointed by each government in the weeks to come.
Reach the reporter at julia.shumway@asu.edu or follow @JMShumway on Twitter.
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