Winter 2006 ASUCD Election

Another quarter means another ASUCD Election for the undergraduate students of UC Davis. This election has not yielded any scandals yet, though you never know with this Elections Committee. The election was a decisive victory for LEAD, who retained the Presidency and zerg rushed the Senate for 4 seats. At the end of this election, LEAD controls 2/3 of the Senate, the Executive, and has appointed every justice of the ASUCD Court save Chief Justice Fricke.

Results are now available at the elections website. A graphical breakdown of the Senate results is also available.

There were many issues on the table, from the creation of an ASUCD Publicity Committee, making a recording studio for KDVS, and restoring integrity to the Senate. These were all part of the platforms of the candidates and slates running:

• Student Focus
• L.E.A.D.
• Ignite
• and four independents

See the slate pages for platforms, and look at the individual candidate pages for the independents.

Presidential Candidates

As normal, there were two tickets of presidential candidates from the incumbent slates.

Senatorial Candidates

There were 14 candidates running for 6 seats — see /Senate Candidates details of specific candidates.

The winners were:

• Michael A. Molnar (Ignite)
• Marvin Zamora (L.E.A.D.)
• Naomi Amaha (L.E.A.D.)
• Dwaimy Rosas-Romero (L.E.A.D.)
• Ravi Deepak (L.E.A.D.)
• George Ajlouny (Student Focus)

LEAD congregates as the results are read Student Focus supporters gathered in the back.

Ballot Measure

There was one Constitutional Amendment on this ballot, authored by Brent Laabs. It's a fairly simple matter involving the pocket veto in ASUCD. Article IV Section 9 prohibits pocket vetoes, but the language of Section 10 is vague enough that it seems to allow pocket vetoes. This amendment clarifies the latter section so that bills must be explicitly vetoed by the ASUCD President.

This amendment is the precursor to a veritable barrage of constitutional amendments coming up in the Fall election, most of which are only for clarifying the constitution.

Since SGAO is too lame to put the Amendment on the ASUCD Website, it's hosted here.

This ballot measure passed by a large margin.

Election Calendar

• Petitions Available - Jan. 24-30 in SGAO
• Petitions Due - Jan. 31 in SGAO (before 10am)
• Mandatory Candidates Meeting - Jan. 31 at 7pm (Olson 206)
• Coffee House Senate Candidates' Forum - Feb. 15 at noon
• Coffee House President/VP Candidates' Forum - Feb. 16 at noon
• ELECTION DAYS - Feb. 22 at 8am until Feb. 24 at 8am (elections.ucdavis.edu)
• Get-out-the-Vote Concert - Feb. 22 at noon (MU Patio)
• Results Announced - Feb. 24 at noon (MU East Conference Room)

Earlier Potential Candidates

• JimSchwab wanted to run for President with LEAD, but his financial aid was cut and he was unable to run (because he would have to work too much on outside jobs to be an effective President).
• Student Focus lost multiple Senate candidates and is not running a full slate.
• Greg Russell decided to embark on a national college football tour in the fall, which would likely conflict with a seat on the ASUCD Senate. He was also concerned about potential conflicts between senate and his work as Director of City and County Affairs.
• The Elections Committee Slate also led a spirited albeit fictional early campaign.
• Molly Sundstrom pulled out on Jan 29^th.

Averted Disasters

The biggest scandal this election — feline voting! To keep with tradition, the California Aggie advertising department lost the order for the Sample Ballot. This may sound familiar because it happened in the Fall 2005 ASUCD Election. On Friday, February 17th, the Aggie contacted the Elections Committee Media Coordinator and claimed that they did not have an order for a 2-page advertisement. Thankfully the Elections Committee learned to never trust the Aggie and had Creative Media make the advertisement; some say that we have the gift of foresight.

The Aggie was then e-mailed and informed that indeed we had ugraded our advertisement to two full pages. On Tuesday, February 21, (when the sample ballot was run in the Aggie) the Elections Committee Media Coordinator went down to the Aggie to fill out a new order to pay for the advertisement. At this point, the Aggie informed her that they had found the order.

Also, Student Focus did not have a campaign treasurer sign the forms for the voluntary expenditure agreement for all of their candidates. The Elections Committee briefly considered disqualifying the entire slate, but instead decided to give the slate a few more hours to have them find someone to sign the forms. There are rumors that someone from LEAD offered to sign the forms for Focus before they were due, but that Chris Herold refused.

• Actually, what happened was that they had someone fill out the first page of the 10-page Expenditure Form but this person didn't sign the rest of the pages. Seeing as I got this job after the Rob Roy Disqualification Controversy and said I wouldn't disqualify candidates on technicalities, we had no intention of disqualifying the entire slate. However, Chad and I joked about it to one another. Their Expenditure Forms were all correct just missing a signature, so they had Spencer Higgins sign the form and be the Campaign Treasurer instead. This only would have been a disaster if we had actually tried to disqualify the entire slate. - JonathonLeathers

Comparison to Pre-Choice Voting

We can estimate what the results would have been under ASUCD's old "block voting" system by counting the number of choices each candidate got in the top six. We can't be sure this would be the actual result, as the voting behavior of individual voters would probably change somewhat. But it should be close.

By this calculation, L.E.A.D. would have swept the election (as they actually did in the Winter 2001 election). You can even see that the candidates are bunched together by slate, in order of the slates' popularity.

*winners

Most Last-Place Choices

Some voters decide to vote all of the way to the last place — since these votes cannot concievably help a candidate, they represent the Most Hated Man on Campus award. The most hated man in ASUCD this year is Mo Li, followed by Michael Molnar who will hold a seat on the Senate.

*winners

Links

• Winter 2006 Ballot Data and Reports