Student Union’s (SU) rerun of this semester’s senate election opened on the evening of Dec. 3 at 9 p.m. and will close on Dec. 5 at 9 p.m. The redo of the election comes after SU’s Constitutional Council found that the ballot required votes for 12 candidates for each Senate and Treasury instead of being able to cast votes for up to 12 candidates for each. 

As Treasury and Arts & Science Council elections were uncontested, SU decided to only rerun Senate’s election.

“Both Constitutional Council and Election Commission are deeply invested in making sure students have access to a free and fair election, and we are both working hard to do so,” Chief Justice and senior Merry Schlarman wrote in a statement to Student Life.

Junior and senator Jace Slone filed the request to redo this election a day after the ballots opened. Slone, who lost this semester’s election after filing his request, said he was compelled to go to the Constitutional Council after receiving complaints from constituents regarding the 12 candidate voting requirement. 

“I’m very grateful that we’re getting another shot at it,” Slone said. 

Slone also said he requested a redo of the election as he felt there was a “smear campaign” against him this election cycle.

“The thing that was really disturbing was members of our student government had said on Sidechat that they were in our student government, and they were saying [I’m a misogynist and a racist] through Sidechat,” Slone said.

He also said that they should face consequences for violating rules.  

“That is a violation of our campaign election rules [which] says that no member of SU can use their post in order to campaign against someone running [… and] there were never any consequences for people that did that.”

While the rerun of the election was not granted on these grounds, there was a violation of SU Constitution’s Equity Clause this semester that also pushed the redo as some voters weren’t informed of write-in candidates prior to casting their ballots. 

Election Commissioner and senior Rachel Gwon said SU will be more consistent with its messaging to voters going forward.

“We’re obviously going to work on every issue that we have this election moving forward and just work on being better,” Gwon said. “[This] won’t happen again.”

In the midst of one of the lowest SU election voter turnouts in a decade, Slone hopes that voters will turn out for this second election despite the two-day voting window.

“It’s a very short turnaround, but I just really think it’s important that the will of the student body is listened to, received, and respected in these elections.”