After a narrow race ultimately decided by a single vote, Abebe Kebede, a candidate for Third Year Council vice president, conceded defeat to opponent Natalia Mercado following a statement by the University Board of Electors.
The close election was a result of a system designed to avoid actual runoff races. The UBE's current regulations state if one candidate does not win by a majority of votes, then that candidate's opponents are automatically eliminated and their votes are distributed to the other candidates according to voters' ranking of the other candidates.
In the case of the Third Year Council vice presidential election, none of the four candidates won the required majority vote after polls closed. Therefore, the second-ranked votes that went to the candidate with the fewest votes, Chris Mullen, were distributed among the remaining candidates - Nitya Reddy, Kebede and Mercado.
Fifty-three of the students who selected Mullen as their top candidate placed Kebede second, 80 of these students preferred Mercado and 75 selected Reddy as their second choice. After this redistribution of votes, a majority was not attained for the second time, so votes that went to the candidate who got the least votes, Reddy, were distributed to Kebede and Mercado. After the final round, Mercado beat Kebede - 664 to 663.
"In other words, for each student voter that selected the eliminated candidate as his or her first choice, the system looks at who the student voter ranked second and distributes the vote to that candidate," UBE Chair Jennifer Kim stated in a press release.
The press release also stated that such regulations could be found in the UBE Rules and Regulations under Section G.3,8, which all University electoral candidates are required to be familiar with before declaring their candidacy.
Although the UBE recognizes that the election was unusually close, it remains confident in the election's results.
"The fact that candidate Natalia Mercado won by the narrowest of all possible margins is not easy to overlook. However, it is the job of the UBE to run a fair election and we feel that has been done," Kim said.
Though Kedebe expressed disappointment in the election's results, and even considered challenging them, he ultimately decided to accept the decision.
"The only thing left to do is to concede," he said. "Natalia will be a great person as a vice president."
Mercado hopes that the results will help inform University students about the rules of University elections, adding that the biggest problem of the system is that students do not understand all of its details.
"For the system itself, I would say that it is the most fair for the type of elections that we have at the University," she said.
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