VACANT POSITIONS. The Freshmen and Special Elections saw a number of positions unfilled because quotes were not reached. Photo by Alexandra L. Huang
TWENTY-FOUR positions for the Central Board (CB), course and block representatives were left unfilled by the end of the Freshmen and Special Elections held last August 13 to 15.
In the CB meeting on August 31, however, appointments for two vacant CB representative positions were approved.
Xavier Tobias was appointed the School of Science and Engineering sophomore CB representative, while Michael del Mundo was named the School of Humanities junior CB representative.
The jurisdiction of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) includes processes before and during elections. In the event that a position is left vacant after votes have been tallied, either the Sanggunian makes the appointments or the position is left vacant until the next elections.
Secretariat Commissioner Kryslette Bunyi and Finance Commissioner Zedrick Torres, however, said that there were more candidates and positions that reached quota this year as compared to last year’s elections.
As stated in Article XI, Section I of the Amended Electoral Code of 2011, “The elections shall be considered valid only if at least 50% + 1 of the constituency have cast their votes.”
Visibility and promotion problems
For freshman Kyle See, Comelec should improve on information dissemination. “Some people were clueless about the important dates like the Miting de Avance, and some of the people who ran were pretty unknown for lack of advertisement.”
Freshman Melissa Start suggested that Comelec work on visibility. “I guess if there was more hype surrounding the elections, or if it were advertised more efficiently, then more people would’ve been encouraged to vote.”
Mark Aldecimo, elected Block NN representative, faulted students who did not vote for the problem of not reaching the quota.
“I don’t think the election was really successful because there were a lot of blocks that didn’t reach their quotas, but I don’t think that it’s the Comelec’s fault. I think it was because of the students who didn’t take advantage of their right to vote,” he said.
Comelec commissioners recognized the need for improvement in the election system and the number of attendees for the next elections.
Delays and system failures
The elections were originally scheduled from August 8 to 10, but were delayed due to the suspension of classes caused by the August monsoon rains.
Logistics Commissioner Margarita Castrillo said that they had to adjust the schedule. Chief Commissioner Jasmine Leaño said that after consultations with the Student Judicial Court, they moved the elections the week after.
Consequently, the campaign period was extended until 9:00 AM on August 13.
“[The elections were] fairly organized and [were] quickly rescheduled after the typhoon suspensions,” said See.
The elections experienced system failures and a delayed opening on the first day. “We only had problems during the first day because there were three candidates with problems. There were three block reps not appearing on the list [of candidates],” explained Torres in Filipino.
Castrillo said, “It’s not really the Comelec who does the programming because we have a partner that programs the system. It kind of depends on them [Management Information Systems Association].”
To make up for the delay on the first day, Comelec extended the voting period on the last day for 90 minutes.
Start said that the election proper was better than expected. “I was expecting it to be kinda disorganized but the whole process of voting was pretty straightforward and quick.”
With reports from Jose C. Cua
