Almost two hours after the voting deadline passed Thursday, the ASUO Elections Board finally unlocked the office doors to a mob of anxious people waiting outside and posted election results, which revealed Nilda Brooklyn and Joy Nair will battle Eric Bailey and Jeff Oliver in next week’s general election.
Although this year’s primary election period was extended to four days to help increase voter turnout, only 9 percent of the student body voted, even less than the 10- to 15-percent marks of previous years.
But the results and lower voter turnout weren’t the only significant outcomes of the night.
The elections board also revealed its decision to disqualify candidates Bret Jacobson and Matt Cook, although the pair technically placed second, beating Bailey and Oliver by more than 100 votes.The board decided to remove Jacobson and Cook from the ballot before it saw election results to ensure an unbiased vote, elections board member Ken Best said.
Best said about 1,528 students voted, but added that the exact numbers were not available because other board members probably locked them up before leaving the office.
The four other board members left the ASUO office promptly after posting results and were unavailable for comment.
Best attributed the low turnout results to technical problems with Duck Web, short preparation time and a general lack of election interest by the student body.
Duck Web crashed multiple times during the election with the combined traffic of voters and students registering for classes, which may have led to frustration and lost voters.

Best added that Duck Web voting ran more smoothly last year. Best was elections coordinator last year.
This year the elections board also had only a couple of weeks to prepare for the elections, as opposed to the couple of months it had last year. Best said this threw the board members behind and didn’t give them enough time to publicize the election.
Although a couple of grievances were filed this year, Best said this year’s election didn’t cause as much controversy as last year’s, and not as much attention was drawn to the election. He said the timing of this year’s grievances didn’t cause as much excitement because decisions were made during the primaries.
“Problems like grievances tend to get the campus fired up,” he said. “Since this year the grievance results were announced with election results, it didn’t cause as much controversy.”
But Brooklyn Campaign Manager Melissa Unger said the elections board unfairly kept observers and members of the press out of the ASUO office as the board prepared results.
Election rules state that any campus publications that print at least monthly can have two observers, and each presidential candidate can have one observer, other than the candidate, in the room where the ballots are counted.
“There should be people in the room to overlook the elections board to make sure the board isn’t biased,” Unger said. “They should have to be careful, and they aren’t having to be careful when there’s no one in the room.”
As usual, this year’s election also brought about some humorous write-ins for different races. These included names such as former ASUO President Wylie Chen and former Vice President Mitra Anoushiravani, Homer Simpson, “Me,” and the inanimate concrete knob located next to the EMU Amphitheater.