Let the race begin... again.
Having run a smooth executive election, the Duke Student Government election commission finalized plans for a runoff election between the two presidential candidates who received the most votes, juniors Taylor Collison and Matthew Slovik.
With no formal complaints filed in the election, Will Fagan, chair of the commission and a senior, said he was extremely happy with how it was run.
The runoff will occur Tuesday, March 18. Students can vote online between 9 a.m. and 11 p.m., although there will be no polling stations. The two candidates will have no additional campaign budgets, but will be able to use remaining funds from their previous presidential campaigns.
The possibility of a runoff was called into question after Collison, Slovik and several current DSG officers held a closed-door meeting Tuesday night and into early Wednesday morning. The candidates declined again Wednesday to comment specifically on the substance of their discussions, stating only that they had to do with student issues and not a restructuring of DSG.
Both candidates have already begun to look ahead, beyond spring break, to the next election.
Slovik said he would continue to campaign and try to relax. "I applaud Will and the election commission for all of the hard work that they put into running this election," he said.
Collison said he would focus on gathering student opinions and reassessing his campaign goals.
"With [the election] immediately following spring break, I think it all begins with realizing the goals of the other three candidates and realizing what made those candidates gain almost half of the student vote... candidates who are no longer in the election process but whose ideas are very important towards developing DSG in the future," he said.
In debating a recent election bylaw change, some DSG legislators had previously questioned the wisdom of having a runoff, worried that voter turnout would be much lower. Fagan said he is not sure what to expect.
"I would think it would be pretty high, I don't know if we'll get up to 57 percent again," he said, referring to the record-high 57.36 percent of undergraduates who voted in the executive elections Tuesday. "57 percent of the people thought DSG was important enough to vote on, and I would think they would do that again in the runoff," Fagan added.
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