After low voter turnout for the second of two Duke Student Government elections last year, DSG has reshuffled the executive board and Senate election schedule.
Although DSG grouped committee vice president elections with Senate elections last year, the student body will return this year to choosing vice presidents on the same day as the president and executive vice president.
“It was our hope that by combining the two elections, we would elevate focus on vice president elections, which in our minds are equally as important [as president and executive vice president],” said DSG Executive Vice President Pete Schork, a junior, who wrote the executive order in September changing the election based on an agreement between the executive board and the cabinet.
The executive order was written last summer while the Senate was out of session, but the Senate had the opportunity to repeal the legislation this Fall.
Last year, committee vice president elections were held with Senate elections to allow president and executive vice president candidates to run for other positions on the executive board if they did not win their first-choice position, said senior Gregory Morrison, former DSG executive vice president and a Chronicle columnist. He added that the process did not have its intended effect.
“When Awa Nur [Trinity ’10] won, Mike Lefevre and Chelsea Goldstein [Trinity ’10] lost.... Our 2009-2010 executive board would have been strong if they’d had the opportunity to be elected to [other] positions,” Morrison said. “The split election was designed to allow more continuity in the upper ranks of DSG.”
None of last year’s unsuccessful candidates, however, sought a committee vice president position after losing the race for president or executive vice president.
DSG President Mike Lefevre, a senior, said the organization “loses so much talent” when unsuccessful contenders do not attempt to gain a different position.
“It was such a grueling process to run for executive vice president and president that nobody took advantage of the opportunity to run for something else,” Lefevre said.
In addition to the lack of former contenders running for other executive board positions, last year’s separate elections presented a large voter turnout discrepancy.
Although 41.5 percent of the student body cast votes for president and executive vice president, only 26 percent voted in the election for committee vice presidents and senators, Schork wrote in an email. Schork attributed this drop in votes to “burnout” because the student body participated in two elections last year—Young Trustee in February and DSG president and executive vice president in March—prior to selecting committee vice presidents and the Senate in April.
Although Lefevre said voter turnout will increase with the new schedule, he expressed concern for the Senate election because DSG has struggled in the past with generating substantial interest in the election of committee senators.
Schork added that last year’s timetable presented problems with student groups endorsing candidates for DSG president and executive vice president but not committee vice presidential candidates, noting that burnout applied especially to groups who previously endorsed a candidate for Young Trustee.
“Returning to what we’ve had in the past will shift focus and eliminate that division of importance,” Schork said.
The executive board election will take place April 6 and the Senate election will occur April 21.
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