MSA elections are over
Published April 18, 2008
After more than a month, the 2008 Missouri Students Association Senate elections are over.
The Missouri Students Association Board of Elections Commissioners certified the results of election within the College of Arts and Science around 4:30 p.m. Thursday, BEC Chairman Geoffrey Grammer said.
A run-off election was required to break a tie between two candidates and determine a winner for the 18th available seat within the school. Junior sociology major Daniel Thode won the seat, defeating junior microbiology major John Henry Wolpers.
This year’s election was marked by a bevy of technical glitches and MSA infighting. A campus-wide election was held March 17-19, but four schools required new elections because of problems with the electronic ballots distributed through the Division of Information Technology. Second elections within the College of Arts and Science, College of Business, College of Engineering and School of Journalism were held April 7-9.
Conflicts erupted within MSA after it was discovered that the ballots were sent out about 15 minutes early using DoIT’s mass e-mailing program; about 25 students voted before the official 6 p.m. start time of the election. At a meeting between the Senate cabinet and the BEC, the possibility of those ballots being used as absentee votes was discussed. The BEC initially agreed to use the ballots in the case of a tie, but later decided not to use them at all.
Grammer said he is relieved the election is finally over. He said he will work with the other BEC members to outline ways to avoid this year’s problems for next year’s elections.
“A lot of the problems were (DoIT) problems, it wasn’t the BEC’s or anyone in MSA’s fault,” he said. “I feel that being the BEC we got blamed and that a lot of heat came on us, but looking back there wasn’t much more that we could have done.”
Grammer said members of the BEC and MSA Senate could have handled the problems better by not letting emotions take over the discussions.
“Emotions got involved when they shouldn’t have,” he said. “It got to the point that everything took too long. Everybody probably should have worked together more. I’m relieved it’s over. I feel it could have ended earlier, but no one acted appropriately. I’m guilty of that, too.”
Grammer said he does not plan to pursue a position on the BEC next year. MSA’s three branches appoint members to the BEC’s executive board. He said next year’s BEC should plan for every worst-case scenario so what happened this year doesn’t happen again.
