Anuli Ononye, often described as the most progressive candidate in the race, has won the SA Presidency. According to her candidate statement, Anuli supports mandatory ‘Anti-Racism’ training for faculty, and has advocated for disarming campus police.
Her victory does not come without controversy, however. 454 ballots were not counted toward the final election result. The Student Assembly election administrators have not disclosed a reason for why said ballots are uncounted for.
One of her opponents, Zion Sherin, was disqualified for undisclosed reasons. It is not clear whether or not the 454 ballots that were disposed of had him ranked as their #1 choice, and whether or not there were any other candidates selected.
In the official results published on the Cornell Student Assembly website, only Anuli Ononye, the apparent winner, and Valentina Xu, one of her opponents, were listed as candidates. Zion, who was disqualified, and who received an unknown share of the vote, is not at all listed. Given that university officials did not reveal what share of the vote he garnered, nor why he was disqualified, concerns have been raised about the transparency of the Cornell Student Assembly’s electoral process.
Given the rank voting system, had the ballots not been disregarded, Valentina Xu may have won the presidency.
Xu has been described by some conservative students as a more moderate option, and opposed disarming the CUPD this past fall.
Austin Cochran, an Information Science major, provided the following analysis to the Cornell Review:
“One of two things is true: either
1. Zion received 454 first choice votes in total, and upon his disqualification, all 454 of those ballots were discarded, effectively disenfranchising those voters who voted first for Zion, but had also listed a 2nd and 3rd choice candidate.
2. Zion received a large quantity of first choice votes, including 454 voters who did not rank the subsequent candidates. Zion was eliminated from contention, and his voters’ second choices are reflected in Anuli and Valentina’s totals of 1521 and 1419, respectively. In this case, the tabulation is in fact a second round tabulation.”
UPDATE (May 13th) Patrick Mehler, Director of Elections, provided the following statement to The Review:
“Firstly, the 454 ballots were all counted, what it means is that, of all the voters, 454 voters did not have their first or second choice win a seat in any of the elections they decided to vote in. Every person’s vote did count, that number just reflects how many people didn’t have a first or second choice win due to the hare voting system. In short, all ballots are counted in the final election result.”
“Secondly, the tallies are conducted as if Zion never ran in the first place; whoever voted for Zion, their second choice was made their first as is standard with hare voting. All voters were included,” he continued.
“Finally, in terms of why Zion was disqualified, that remains confidential. What I can share is there were challenges brought forth, the committee held hearings, reviewed the facts and reached a conclusion; for which the candidate asked for a JCC Review to ensure the committee did not err in its decision. That review took place and the Elections Committee decision to disqualify the challenged candidate was upheld.”
“In short, everyone’s votes were counted and there isn’t a scenario in which another candidate would win as every vote was counted.”
As a matter of fact, all voters did not have their votes counted. Voters who only voted for Zion, but did not rank a second or third choice, had their votes discarded.
The story is ongoing, and will be updated as more details become available.
