Nabozny clinches presidency

In a landslide victory, junior and Deputy Speaker of the Senate Pete Nabozny unofficially won the Students’ Association presidential election last night. This election replaced the voided election from last week.”I want to thank everyone who supported me throughout this extended campaign,” Nabozny said. “I appreciate all the help that I got and the opportunity that this campaign gave me to reach out to students.”This week’s election collected nearly 800 votes, or about 22 percent of the campus. Approximately one third of the campus voted in last week’s presidential election. According to the unofficial vote tally, Nabozny won 418 votes, sophomore and Senator Matt Goldblatt collected 282 and sophomore Dan Rudolph came in third with 50 votes. The Elections Committee praised the efforts of the candidates and voters for making the effort to voice their preferences twice.Immediate reaction from the two other candidates was positive. “I feel that the election overall went very well,” Goldblatt said. “What was important was that somebody with experience in student government who is well qualified for the position got it. I have full faith that Pete will continue the development of student government on campus which can only lead to a positive net effect.”Rudolph expressed similar sentiments. “I think that the campaign went really well,” he said. “[We all] maintained a high level of integrity and it was good to be part of such a clean race.”Nabozny also praised the efforts of his competitors and his hope that both will play an active role in student government. “I will definitely continue my deep involvement with student government,” Goldblatt said. “The prospect of being involved with next year’s government administration excites me.”Upon hearing that his Deputy won the election, senior and Speaker of the Senate Alex Voetsch said, “I think he’ll do a tremendous job with the office and continue the good work he’s done this year.”Outgoing senior and SA President Chris Calo was also pleased with the outcome. “I think we can all be confident he’ll do an incredible job,” Calo said. “It is evident he really cares about continuing to improve the student government.”Nabozny stated that his first priority, as he begins serving the student body in this new capacity, will be to ratify and adopt the proposed constitution to set the transition in motion.”I want to get more people involved in government,” Nabozny said. “Through added involvement, the government will be more efficient and effective. The actions of government need to be transparent so that all students can see what their government is doing.”Calo also expressed that he looked forward to working with Nabozny. “I want to give him the knowledge I have about the presidency so that he can start off in a better spot than where I started.”The presidential election was rerun this week following the disqualification of junior and Chief of Staff Ilana Kaplan-Shain. “I decided not to file an appeal with the All Campus Judicial Council because I did not want to delay the valuable training process for the winner,” Kaplan-Shain said. “I have too much respect for the presidency to be responsible for limiting training time. A transition period is essential to the success of the administration.”Even though this was the second election, the turnout level was close to where it was in recent years. Last year’s presidential election attracted less than 100 more voters than this week’s election. Turnout was however much lower than last week’s roughly 1,100 voters. Keesing can be reached atjkeesing@campustimes.org.