Sophomore Elliott Wolf was elected 2006-2007 Duke Student Government president after a computerized runoff Thursday night.
Wolf, who is a Chronicle columnist and Angier B. Duke Scholar, received 36.76 percent of the 3,479 votes cast in the presidential race. The DSG website indicated that 3,543 people voted for at least one of the positions-the highest voter turnout in recent years. Although made official by the DSG executive board, the results will be challenged by sophomore Hasnain Zaidi, who finished behind Wolf with 27.36 percent of votes.
The election bylaws state that if no candidate receives a 10 percent plurality-a requirement that Wolf did not meet-the winner will be determined by a runoff. Zaidi drew attention to a potential conflict between two sections of the bylaws regarding how the plurality will be determined.
DSG Attorney General Bryce Walker, a senior, said the conflict within the bylaws is not definite. "It's not a black-and-white situation," he said. "They aren't necessarily two different things."
He added that the election commission will further investigate the situation by discussing possible interpretations of the bylaws with the candidates and the designers of the software that conducted the runoff.
Zaidi has a 24-hour period from the time the results were made official Thursday night to present a formal complaint. The election commission will meet tomorrow to review any complaints and reach a final decision.
"I'm pleased with the results of the election," Wolf said. "We'll see what happens."
This year, instead of selecting one candidate, voters ranked all five on their online ballots. The software-which used the rankings to conduct an instant runoff-was added to the voting website in order to prevent problems raised in last year's runoff, which lasted six days.
Although Walker would not comment on whether there was in fact a flaw in the bylaws, he said Zaidi pointed to a potential conflict between two sections.
The first section of the bylaws states that if no candidate receives the necessary 10 percent plurality, the top two finishers will compete in a runoff election. The second section states that the lowest finisher will be dropped from the race, and all votes for that candidate will be redistributed among voters' other choices. The second process is repeated until the first section's criteria are met.
Juniors Remington Kendall, Felix Li and Thomas Storrs finished third, fourth and fifth, respectively, in this year's race. Zaidi said that by dropping Storrs from the race, the software conducted a four-way runoff that redistributed approximately 1,100 votes to Kendall and Li.
"That's a third of all the votes cast," Zaidi said. "Regardless of the outcome, I just want to make sure that every Duke student's voice is included."
Among the other five executive office races, the only other forced runoff was for the position of vice president of community interaction.
Freshman Jordan Giordano won the hotly contested race, beating junior Daniel Bowes by 30 votes.
Winners of the four other races received enough votes to render runoffs unnecessary.
Juniors Joe Fore, Jimmy Soni, David Snider and Maggie McGannon will serve as executive vice president, vice president of academic affairs, vice president of athletics and campus services and vice president of student affairs, respectively.
Walker said the website-which featured profiles of all the candidates-may have been responsible for what executives called the high voter turnout.
This year's voting pool exceeded last year's by 691 students. With 52.4 percent of the student body casting ballots, DSG executives said they were surprised by the level of turnout because of campus' current focus on the alleged rape of a woman by members of the men's lacrosse team.
"I was even more excited by the turnout-especially since the DSG elections haven't been the dominating topic on campus, as they were last year," Longoria said. "It just speaks to the importance of having a representative body of the students."
Wolf attributed the increased participation rate to this year's wide pool of candidates.
With five students running for president-as opposed to last year's three-candidates were able to reach more students, he said.
"There was a lot of opportunity for presidential candidates to get out there," he said. "I hope it will make DSG an effective lobby on behalf of the students."
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