Yale College Council elections, along with elections for the Freshman Class Council, ended with few surprises Tuesday night. Although there will be runoffs for FCC elections in Jonathan Edwards, Davenport and Timothy Dwight colleges, most of the voting went according to schedule.
The online voting system, which has been in place for nearly a year and a half, worked without fault Tuesday evening, YCC Secretary Ryan Sheely ’04 said.
“We have the system pretty well institutionalized and most of the bugs worked out,” Sheely said.
Turnout varied largely from college to college, Sheely said, with the variation explained largely by the class of the candidates. In the YCC races in which the only candidates were freshmen, the turnout was significantly lower than average. Newly elected Morse College Rep. Nirupam Sinha ’05 said Sheely told him Morse had the highest turnout of all the colleges.
Matthew Harsha-Strong ’06, who lost a race for Trumbull YCC representative, said that although voter turnout among freshmen was good, it was difficult to achieve recognition with upperclassmen unfamiliar with freshman candidates. Harsha-Strong said he still remains enthusiastic about the YCC, and plans to serve as an associate with the goal of running for office again next year.
This fall, the issues surrounding the elections were not nearly as controversial as those typically engulfing spring officer elections, with most of the focus on day-to-day student life.
“The campaigns for the representative elections, especially the fall ones, tend to be more focused on selling the candidate as an individual rather than specific issues,” Sheely said.
All candidates ran very fair campaigns, Sheely said, and all candidates were collegial in both victory and defeat. A total of 36 candidates ran for the YCC and 62 for the FCC.
–Philip Shaw