Josh Katcher '06 will be Cornell's next student trustee, according to preliminary results released by the Office of Assemblies last night.
"Votes were tabulated using the Hare system of voting. Josh Katcher had the highest votes total in each round and is declared the winner," said Hope Mandeville, director of the Office of Assemblies, in an e-mail.
The Hare system of voting is one wherein participants are asked to rank their preferences for a number of candidates.
Peter S. Cohl '05 was the first runner up and will therefore be eligible to take Katcher's place if the latter is unable to serve.
The student trustee elections were held earlier this week simultaneously with those for Class Council, Student Assembly and Graduate and Professional Student Assembly. When the votes were tallied, it was discovered that there was a tie between two candidates for the Architecture, Art and Planning seat on the S.A. Though voting ended Wednesday morning, the results will not be released until later next week after a re-vote to settle the tie occurs, according to Dena Ruebusch '04, head of the S.A.'s election commission.
The AAP revote will take place from Tuesday to Wednesday, although, the commission is "still setting that up," Ruebusch said.
4,112 undergraduate students, 30.8 percent of the undergraduate student body, voted in this year's elections, while graduate student voters increased by 350 percent with 951 votes. In total, 26 percent of the campus voted, according to Ruebusch.
The Office of Assemblies is scheduled to release official results of all the elections on March 18.
Election Day '09 was a roller-coaster for election reformers. Instant runoff voting had a great night in Minnesota, where St. Paul voters chose to implement IRV for its city elections, and Minneapolis voters used IRV for the first time—with local media touting it as a big success. As the Star-Tribune noted in endorsing IRV for St. Paul, Tuesday’s elections give the Twin Cities a chance to show the whole state of Minnesota the benefits of adopting IRV. There were disappointments in Lowell and Pierce County too, but high-profile multi-candidate races in New Jersey and New York keep policymakers focused on ways to reform elections; the Baltimore Sun and Miami Herald were among many newspapers publishing commentary from FairVote board member and former presidential candidate John Anderson on how IRV can mitigate the problems of plurality elections.