Wednesday’s ASUP election ended in a runoff for the president and vice president positions. The finalists are Brandon Rivera and John Akers running against Tsikata Apenyo and Abby Sherman.
The runoff election will be held next Tuesday and Wednesday.
ASUP election rules require a runoff election if neither ticket receives a majority of the vote (over 50 percent). With a total number of 1308 votes in the election (up 99 votes from last year), Apenyo and Sherman came in the lead with 635 (48.55 percent of total votes received), while Rivera and Akers followed with 508 (38.3 percent of total votes received). 36.59 percent of UP’s undergraduate population participated in the election.
Junior Hannah Baade was elected ASUP’s Director of Finance, freshman Mario Sarich was elected Director of Communications and incumbent Jacque Nelson (running unopposed) was elected Campus Program Board Director.
Resolution 17-02, which will change the ASUP budgeting process, also passed.
When the results were finally called at 9:30 p.m. Wednesday night, Apenyo and Sherman were visibly frustrated that their strong lead still resulted in a runoff. Had they received an additional 1.5 percent of the total vote, they would have won the election outright.
“I think the word for what we’re doing right now is ‘processing,’” Sherman said. “Campaigning is hard and it’s a long, grueling process, but ultimately our hearts are in the right place and we’re still going for it full force because this is something we care about and want to do together. We’re really passionate and that flame is not going to wither.”
But Apenyo and Sherman also said they were energized by the voter turnout and the amount of support they gained in the first round of voting. Both saw the support as an indication that their platform of creating a campus culture against sexual assault was well received across campus.
“We won the first part of the election and that just really shows people really believe in the message,” Apenyo, current ASUP vice president, said. “That’s the thing with this kind of platform, it’s not like a wishy-washy platform. People are going to be affected.”
Rivera and Akers, too, were recovering from a long week of both campaigning and ASUP budgeting — both being current ASUP executive board members — when they heard news of the runoff.
“We’re pretty excited to be in the runoff,” Rivera said. ”It doesn’t look like it right now by our facial expressions, but we’re just pretty exhausted. It’s been a pretty stressful past two days.”
Rivera said he’s not worried about the voter gap in this first round of election results. He and Akers said they are looking forward to a few days of rest and more time to get their platform of education, safety and sustainability across to the student body.
“I felt chills today from the amount of support we received in the past two days of just people coming up to us saying we want to see you come back,” Rivera said. “They’ve seen that we’ve done work and that we care deeply about the students. It’s amazing.”
