The ASUO primary election has paired Adam Petkun and Mena Ravassipour against Ben Strawn and Diana Aguilar in a battle for ASUO Executive in the upcoming general election.
The primary election results, which came in at around 7 p.m. Wednesday, showed students cast 773 votes for the Petkun/Ravassipour ticket and 654 votes for the Strawn/Aguilar ticket. Adrian Gilmore came in third with 371 votes.
A total of 2,465 students, or 14.05 percent of the student body, voted in the primary election. That number falls short of the ASUO Election Board’s goal of 25 percent turnout. Last year, 15.22 percent of students voted in the primary. Candidates winning more than 50 percent of the votes win the contested seat.
Petkun said even before seeing the results he was hopeful about his ticket’s chances, citing positive reactions from students on campus.
“I can’t even speak right now,” Petkun said. “In all seriousness, I was definitely hopeful. We were getting good reactions from everyone. We were feeling pretty good about things.”
Strawn said the results showed that his ticket has room for improvement.
“I was pretty optimistic about getting into the generals,” Strawn said. “I feel like if you look at the platforms, I feel like we have the most relevant set of issues, and I think we have the best chance of getting our goals accomplished.”
Gilmore said he wasn’t surprised that he didn’t make it into the general election.
“When you don’t have any money and you can’t have your friends dance around in front of the EMU and do other stuff for you, you’re not going to win,” Gilmore said. “I’m disappointed that I won’t be able to continue working for students. I think the problem is the elections are going to be OK and the status quo will begin again.”
This year’s primary election was marred by a DuckWeb error that kept some students from voting for ASUO Student Senate academic seat candidates. Seats 10, 12 and 14 — which represent journalism/education, architecture and allied arts, and social science — were affected by the error. The elections board has nullified all votes cast for these seats and will move the candidates to the general election. If needed, an additional election will be held April 21 through April 23 for the five Seat 14 candidates.
In the primary election, the Progressive Students Starting Today bloc clinched seven wins in the primary and sent two candidates to the general election. PSST had 13 candidates on the primary ballot.
“I’d say it was mostly the hope that we’d do really well, because we did put a lot of work into it,” said Toby Hill-Meyer, a member of PSST who won a seat on the EMU Board of Directors. “Based on all of that work, we all hoped it’d payoff and we’d win, and for the most part we have.”
Elections Publicity Coordinator Nathan Strauss said voter turnout for the general election, which begins Friday at 9 a.m. and ends Monday at 5 p.m., tends to be lower because many students don’t realize there is a second election, and because there are fewer candidates and less campaigning.
“This is really just the beginning,” Strauss said. “The next round is when everything is decided. It’s important, if not more important, for students to get out and vote on DuckWeb again.”