Well, the petition results have appeared. Not everything has been validated yet, but assuming that there haven’t been too many false petitions, here’s where we stand:
Class President Slates:
As usual, the main competition is for the position of Sophomore Class Presidents, with Frosh Council making a strong show. There are 4 slates for that position, of which 2 have at least one FC member. There appears to only be one slate for Junior Class Presidents (with 5 members, which is unusual) and one slate for Senior Class Presidents.
GSC:
Boring. GSC candidates don’t have to petition. Interesting to note that only 12 candidates have declared thus far, however (they have until March 18th), which means that they would all win at this point. Last year, a mere 15 candidates ran with any seriousness (≥10 votes) (with two only excluded because of a system that relies on both districts (by school) as well as at-large reps), so this isn’t that unusual.
Special Fees:
SPOON, Mock Trial, the Stanford Daily, LSJUMB, SIAS (aka Model UN), SASA, VILA, FliCKS, SHPRC, SSD, GLC, Basmati Raas (which got only 515 online petitions, but apparently likely got over 573 additional paper petitions to qualify anyways), and the Bridge seem to have made it, some relying on a paper campaign to overcome a deficit of digital petitions. Those that seem to have failed (assuming that they can’t make up their deficit with paper petitions) are the Symphony Orchestra, Sigma Nu (irrespective of the debate here), Stanford Solar Car, Students for a Sustainable Stanford, and the Chappie (which got a mere 95 petitions). Some of those will still be on the ballot with limited budgets, however.
And now, what you’ve all been waiting for…
Executive:
All of the slates mentioned in earlier posts (like this one or this one or that one) have succeeded, including the No Rain Campaign!, which switched to paper petitions after they encountered technical problems with the website, meaning that they ended up with only 177 electronic petitions, but were easily over the mark once physical signatures were entered. This means that it’ll be a 6-way race, with at least 3 slates that are making a totally serious run at the position, although the other slates might attract some electoral support as well. The interesting note here is that Cardona/Wharton clearly gave a taste of their electoral muscle, gathering the most petitions of any slate despite only declaring on Wednesday. Although we might expect that Scher/Werner might not have made as much of a push since they were validated earlier, it’s still a sign that this race will be hotly contested.
ASSU Undergraduate Senate:
Assuming no petition issues, there will be 39 candidates on the ballot, with a petition max of 213, or about 1/4 of the total number of votes that are needed to win this year. The list is again very freshman heavy, but there are some sophomores and even a few juniors in the list. It looks to be a competitive year again, so we’ll all wait to see how campaign week shakes out.
