By Josh Siatkowski | Staff Writer
Due to administrative setbacks, freshman senate elections have been pushed back to Oct. 17.
The Student Body Constitution states that fall elections must occur prior to the sixth Friday of the semester, which would be Oct. 4. However, a delay arose due to a previously unfilled vacancy in the electoral commissioner position, Hewitt sophomore and Senate Public Relations Chair Naomi Burgess said.
According to Burgess, the real setback was not finding someone to fill the position, but getting the new appointee confirmed.
“We were waiting on an electoral commissioner, who has now been appointed and was confirmed at our last senate meeting,” Burgess said.
Rockwall junior Jacob Limerick has served as the student government electoral marshall for two years and was set to become commissioner this year. However, Limerick had to be appointed by the judiciary branch, which is where the delay arose.
“Every single one of the judges must be present to vote,” Burgess said.
It was not until an emergency judiciary branch meeting was called on Sept. 22 that this was able to happen.
“We’ve had a bit of delay, but the situation is solved now,” Burgess said.
After Limerick was appointed on Sept. 22, he was quickly confirmed by the student senate on the 26th. Since being officially sworn in, Limerick said he’s worked as hard as he can to get the election season moving.
“[The delays] prevented me from officially starting my role until very recently, but as soon as I could start the process, we acted on the fastest timeline possible,” Limerick said.
According to Burgess, there is already interest from current freshmen.
“We are looking at what we can be doing in the next few weeks before elections to advertise that even more,” Burgess said.
Interested freshmen will attend a mandatory meeting on Oct. 9, after the campaign filing running from Oct. 3 – Oct. 8 ends. There will be a brief campaign period from the Oct. 14 – Oct. 17 before elections.
Limerick said that because of the importance of the job as commissioner, elections cannot move forward without a confirmed commissioner.
“The electoral commissioner’s job is to oversee all student government elections,” Limerick said. “This starts with going over regulations and then enforcing these while overseeing the campaign period to ensure fair campaigning among all candidates. Beyond this, I also create and distribute the ballot and tabulate the results.”
Campaigning freshmen will run for 13 senate seats, and the 13 with the most votes will be sworn into office later this fall. Freshmen will receive emails about how to vote as election day approaches.
