Sophomore president sworn in; senators elected after glitch

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by Ashley Smith, Editor-in-Chief

INDIANOLA, Iowa — Tre Loge was sworn in as sophomore class president during the Student Government Association meeting on Wednesday.

Sophomores Madi Riley and Jacob Becker were elected into the two vacant class senator positions during the meeting after they tied with the most votes.

SGA’s original plan was to fill Samples’ vacant seat with this senator election and then hold another election in the case of another senator winning the class presidency.

SGA has no protocol in the case of a tie.

Therefore, Student Body President Samples laid out two options: SGA could swear in both winning senate candidates—as Loge winning the presidency opened up a senate seat—or they could have two more elections, one to distinguish a winner in the tie and another for Loge’s open senate seat.

Samples recommended the first option, assuming the three elections within two weeks would affect voter turnout negatively.

A motion to swear the two winning candidates in passed 12-3.

The election was also affected by a computer glitch, which allowed students to vote for two candidates instead of one.

“So basically when we started out, when we set it up, we were setting it up for the potential of two candidates and I set it up as for two candidates and inadvertently didn’t change it correctly until Pierce noticed it or somebody brought it to Pierce’s attention and went in and quickly changed it,” SGA adviser Rich Ramos said.

Ramos said the glitch lasted less than a day and did not affect the outcome of the election.

Riley and Becker will be sworn in at the SGA meeting on Jan. 25.