MSA hopefuls await ballot totals

Candidates waiting to hear if their futures involve holding a seat on the Michigan Student Assembly will have to sit by their phones and sweat impending results a little longer than expected.

Ballots were supposed to be counted this weekend, but Election Director Yejide Peters said due to a lack of MSA representative involvement in the election process, ballots will not be tallied until 9 a.m. today.

"Due to the lack of participation of MSA representatives, I am not counting ballots until Monday," Peters said Friday afternoon.

Peters, who has been involved in assembly activities for three years, said she has never before seen such a lack of member involvement in MSA elections.

MSA President Mike Nagrant said many of the representatives were unaware that their duties include counting ballots.

"It was a miscommunication," Nagrant said. "Yejide felt a little overwhelmed when not enough people showed up to count the ballots (Friday morning)."

Peters said if none of the members come to count ballots this morning, she will postpone the process once again.

Peters said once the process gets underway, it should not take longer than three to four hours to count all submitted ballots. She said that because of online voting options, paper ballot totals were low.

Overall voting totals are not yet available and election officials refused to speculate on total student turnout.

Peters said she is prepared to wait as long as it takes to illustrate the importance of member participation in the vote counting and overall election process.

"If no one shows up on Monday, then we will wait until Tuesday to count ballots," Peters said.

Each MSA representative not up for re-election was required to fulfill a number of election service hours, but Peters said only three assembly members had completed their service hours.

"Ballots will not be counted without the required participation of the rest of (the representatives)," Peters said.

Student General Counsel and Engineering Rep. David Burden said he does not mind waiting a couple of extra days to hear the results.

"I'd rather they get it done right then get it done quickly," said Burden, who is currently up for re-election.

Burden also said many MSA representatives were unaware that they needed to count ballots, and predicted they will show up today.

Andrew Wright, co-chair of MSA's Student Task Force, said it is the election staff's responsibility to count ballots.

"I agree with Yejide that it would be nice for MSA to show up. (But delaying the ballot counting) is not the right thing to do," Wright said. "MSA members did show up later on, and she wouldn't let them start the process."

MSA members who are not running are also required to do service hours. Peters said most of those service hours also were not fulfilled.

11-24-97