Jessica Lopez wins graduate SGA senate seat in runoff election

Alex Gravlee, Contributing Writer

The Student Government Association announced the unofficial results for the Nov. 1 run-off special election for the second graduate school seat. The election opened at 7 a.m. and closed at 7 p.m. that day.

Jessica Lopez won the seat with 15 out of 32 votes while Heaven Cauble received 14 votes. Only 32 out of 5,522 total Graduate School students voted in the special election, just 0.58% of graduate students.

Of the remaining three votes, one went to candidate Hallie Phillips, and two votes went to individual write-ins — one for “Quad Squirrel” and another for “You fascists can’t consider this a legitimate election if you don’t tell anybody about it and only get 30 votes out of 5532 eligible voters.”  

The election comes after the SGA announced the results of the graduate school special senate election on Oct. 27 where Garrett Kennedy won the first graduate school seat with 28 out of 30 votes. Both Cauble and Lopez received one vote each, necessitating a run-off per the SGA Elections Board Manual.

According to the elections manual, a run-off election will be held “in the event of a tie in the number of votes received by candidates for Senate seats that results in a school or college surpassing the apportioned seats for that school or college.”

Another special election will be held on Nov. 17 to fill vacant seats from the School of Social Work and the Culverhouse College of Business after the seats were vacated by Sarah Pierce and SGA Speaker of the Senate CJ Pearson. The candidate list will be available on Nov. 14.