Winning By Default…
The ASUO Presidential and Vice Presidential election has concluded. Mariam Hassan and Kiki Akpakwu won after the election went to a runoff between them and UO Student Power candidates Max Jensen and Maxwell Gullickson. Both UOSP executive candidates withdrew from the race before the runoff election could be conducted. This caused the Our UO president and vice president to win by default. The runoffs will continue for the rest of the races beginning Wednesday morning.
Over this week, significant criticism has been surrounding both slates that initially advanced to runoffs. The two women at the head of Our UO faced skepticism due to a conference they attended in December. The Campus Victory Project conference connects to Turning Point USA, a right-wing organization they claim they were unaware of when they attended. They also explained that no explicit Turning Point USA content was presented at the conference. As a campus, we should not speculate that this indicates that their platform is inauthentic.
I disagree with the claim that they are somehow a Turning Point psyop, as there isn't any evidence of that; ruminating on the subject any longer is not valid. What is useful is acknowledging how this election continued a trend of disengagement and false democracy. Voter turnout remains around 10%, which is still inadequate and disappointing. No slate that claims to have run on representing the whole student body should be satisfied with this.
UOSP also faced backlash from students; at one point, the election board banned them from campaigning due to a flyer violation and false endorsement. The relationship between UOSP and the endorsement in question, SJP, culminated in the event that forced the withdrawals. Reports of the presidential candidate berating the SJP leader at the ROAR center early Monday evening confirmed the speculated tension between the group's leaders. In addition, UOSP and SJP have filed grievances and counter grievances against each other, explicitly questioning the authenticity of the evidence used. While Max Jensen's withdrawal was necessary due to his conduct towards SJP leadership, the fact that students are not allowed to choose a different candidate is problematic. While Our UO execs initially won 44% of the vote, having three slates almost inherently meant one would be splitting the vote. Without rank-choice voting or a runoff, there's no way to know how those students who voted for flock-forward would vote during the runoff. Additionally, now that the UO Student power executives have withdrawn, student votes for UOSP would’ve also been redistributed.
The ethical concerns with a candidate winning by default cannot be understated. We say someone wins by default when all competitors have either withdrawn, been disqualified, or failed to meet the requirements to continue in the competition. In other words, it is a decision made by default rather than through a deliberate selection process. This is precisely where the issue is. It raises questions about the legitimacy of the representation if they were not elected in a deliberate selection process. I am not implying that they wouldn't have won; perhaps they were robbed of the opportunity to prove this, just as students were robbed of the chance to choose differently. However, the circumstances under which they will take office will likely decrease student engagement as slate rhetoric has convoluted and heavily manipulated this process, specifically through the use of the complaint system, which was weaponized by slates during this election. Though voter turnout has been low for ASUO elections, there was hope as the winter election showed increased student voting. This election shows less dramatic improvements but still shows improvements compared to last spring. The issue is that students could not actively and deliberately choose their president and vice president; the result was largely circumstantial.
As we approach the runoff and the implementation of Our UO president and vice president, the expectation of student representation that their slate adamantly ran on will be even more necessary to prove. Many students are confused and upset with this process. In addition to the uphill battle of proving they are authentic representatives, they must also acknowledge and repair the incredible election flaws.
