Students elect 2020-21 DSG vice presidents, senators and class council after ballot errors

Update: This article was updated May 17 with the results of the Class of 2022 Class Council election. The results were initially delayed because of pending petitions. 

Next year's class council and Duke Student Government vice presidents and senators have been elected. Attorney General John Markis, a sophomore, provided The Chronicle with a list of the election's winners Saturday evening. Below are the results and a description of the errors that delayed the election’s start.

Academic Affairs: 

Vice President: sophomore Shrey Majmudar

Class of 2023: Devan Desai, Cynthia Dong

Campus Life:

Vice President: sophomore Ramya Ginjupalli

Class of 2022: Gianna Affi

Class of 2023: Dawei Gao, Rhea Tejwani 

Equity and Outreach:

Vice President: sophomore Christina Wang

Class of 2021: Hamza Mohamoud

Class of 2022: Stephanie Green, Shirley Mathur

Class of 2023: Zella Hanson, Tommy Shen

Services and Sustainability: 

Vice President: sophomore Zac Johnson

Class of 2021: Danny Wu

Class of 2022: Anton Hörr, Bisma Suleman

Class of 2023: Chaya Agarwal, Sawyer O'Keefe

Class Council:

2021: President Shreyas Gupta, Vice President Sean Cho

Class of 2022: President Josh Berman, Vice President Alejandro Vogel

2023: President Thuan Tran, Vice President Lucas Alves 

The DSG Senate also elected junior Valeria Silombria as 2020-21 president pro tempore.

Students were also given the chance to vote on amendments to the DSG constitution. Amendments include greater organization of the division of powers, the addition of a communications director and research director and typographical edits, among other proposed changes. That ballot is still open and will remain so until April 20 at noon.

Ballot mishaps

The election got off to a bumpy start, Markis sent students three separate emails Thursday with links to vote. The first, sent a few minutes after noon, was erroneous in that it “displayed a Committee [Vice President] election as uncontested,” DSG President Liv McKinney, a senior, wrote in an email to The Chronicle. In fact, there were two candidates running for the position. 

A correction was then sent around 1 p.m. to correct the error, asking students to revote with the newly attached link. That link was also incorrect, as it did not allow those who had previously voted to input their new answers. 

McKinney sent an email to students acknowledging the errors and letting the student body know that DSG was redrafting the entire ballot to ensure fairness. 

Markis sent the final correct link four hours later. Because of the errors, the voting period was extended to 24 hours after the corrected link was sent.

Editor’s Note: John Markis is also a senior news reporter for The Chronicle.

Matthew Griffin contributed reporting.

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