Thursday morning, the Unite Party celebrated its sweeping win against the Students Party, placing 46 of their members on Senate seats. The election didn’t pass without a hitch though. On Tuesday, the Students Party made a complaint to the UF Supreme Court about a system error where students’ addresses weren’t registered correctly, causing many students to vote in District E when they should have voted for a different district.
Friday, the Student Government held a hearing on election complaints and Jonathan Ossip, member of the Students Party, had plenty to say about how, “Every voter has an impeachable right to vote for the district that represents them.”
Ossip brought up witnesses to further explain the issue and stress how important it is that about 500 votes were not counted during the elections.
Students Party candidate for Jennings Hall Jenna Goldman said, “I think that it’s not right that over 500 people’s vote didn’t count. Even if it’s one person, it’s not supposed to happen regardless the number. It’s not fair.”
After a two-hour meeting, the board decided to suggest a validation of the election results despite the Students Party’s argument. If a new voting day had been rescheduled, students like Morgan Brown, a first-year applied physiology kinesiology major says, “I would have gone and voted again. I think it’s your duty to vote because if you don’t, you can’t complain.”
Brown voted for the Unite Party on Tuesday because she is “a big proponent of people being in control of government” and felt that’s what the Unite Party is trying to do.
On Oct. 3, the new officials will be initiated, and in two weeks they will be able to put into action their ideas and platforms, said Toni Megna, Supervisor of Elections.
“I think it’s going to be interesting to see what they [the Unite Party] can do with the majority of the seats,” Megna said.
She also added she thought it was “awesome” that the Unite Party went straight to the source when it came to its platform by asking the students directly what they wanted for their school.