Four of the six Senate positions not filled in last spring’s ASPC elections were filled Tuesday evening following a day of campus-wide voting. Hans Hassell ’05 defeated Matthew Noerper ’04 for South Campus Representative. Doug Bernstein won the Junior Class President title, beating out Ji Chong in an extremely close race. In a three-way race for the position of Freshman Class President, Alex Borst attained an outright majority against Michael Owen and Kimberly Agalsoff. Mikey Gaertner ’02, running against James Nachtwey ‘02, secured the Off Campus Representative spot on the ASPC Senate.

The final two races came down to a run-off, as no single candidate received a majority of the votes in those three-way races. In a special election Thursday, Samantha Brenner ’02 and Andrew Wooster ’02 vied for North Campus Representative, and Matthew Clark and Tony Forte ran against each other for Sophomore Class President.

Voting was still in progress Thursday afternoon when The Student Life went to press. The results of those elections were scheduled to be posted on the ASPC’s website at http://aspc.pomona.edu late Thursday evening.

"One of the things I’d really like to try is getting bartending lessons for the whole class. I think that would be a lot of fun," said Bernstein, the new Junior Class President. "I’d also like to talk to the mayor [of Claremont] about helping out our class."

After my crushing defeat, Old Ji learned that the politics game is not for him," Chong said. According to Chong, he lost the election by a margin of 16 votes.

"I was glad to see that juniors got out there and voted," Bernstein said. Despite Bernstein’s enthusiasm, only 106 juniors voted, considerably less than half the on campus junior population.

Many juniors are currently studying abroad and were unable to vote.

In the election forum, held Sunday in the Frank Blue Room, Borst called for a Water Fight Wednesday, which she described as a party during reading days with lots of water, an event she termed "Pomonastock." The event would feature several Pomona and 5-C bands. "I did a thing that was sort of like Pomonastock in high school…and it turned out really well," she said.

Borst also said that she’d like to organize a school-wide blanket drive sometime during the winter..

Hassell emphasized listening to the concerns of south campus residents as the primary function of the South Campus Representative.

Joshua Lee ’02 and Andrew Floyd ’04 were the third-place candidates for the North Campus Representative and Sophomore Class President races, respectively. Consequently, they were eliminated during the first round of voting on Tuesday.

According to Ryan Dugger ’04, the elections commissioner, between 625 and 650 students voted. " Voter turnout was pretty good," he said. " Some people don’t care about these elections because they don’t involve the ASPC presidential race."

Dugger was nominated by ASPC President Jake Oken-Berg ’02 for the election commissioner position and was confirmed by the Senate.

When asked about the poor turnout at Sunday’s election forum, Dugger replied that he was disappointed but that "it is always difficult to get people interested in hearing these kinds of speeches."

"I felt that the students who did attend were able to get to know the candidates in a short period of time. The intimate setting made it easy for them to meet the candidates personally before and after their speeches," he said.

However, the only upperclassman in attendance who wasn’t a candidate or a member of TSL’s reporting pool was Matt Kolsky ’03. As a result, Chong was the only upperclassman candidate who chose to read his speech. Many candidates did not bother to show up at all.

On Tuesday, September 25, the Senate rejected a motion on a narrow five to three vote that would have introduced preferential voting, a ballot system that provides for instant runoffs. With a preferential voting system, voters rate each candidate on a given ballot from first through last choice. When the ballots are tallied, first-choices are counted and if a clear majority is not established secondary and tertiary preferences are counted, and so on, until a majority is established.

During Senate debate on the proposal, Wells Miller ’02, a former elections commissioner, Director of the Smith Campus Center Neil Gerard and ASPC President Jake Oken-Berg ’02 all endorsed preferential voting.

This method would have eliminated the need for run-offs as well as, proponents argue, established a more complete manifestation of voter intent.

Dugger also supported preferential voting and was disappointed that it was not used in this election.

"The only real problem [in this election] is that this election wasn’t run using an instant runoff system…. It has made this process 5 twice as difficult for no reason. I’m grateful that the Senators are all volunteering to help staff the runoff election, but I wish they understood how unnecessary this process is," Dugger said. "From my perspective, it would be easy to make this change and I think students would have a more effective election as well. Runoff elections always suffer from low turnout and it bothers me that the dedicated election volunteers are putting extra effort into a process that produces a less valuable result."