The All-Campus Elections Commission revised its official results for the next president of the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly on Monday, a day after releasing incorrect figures.
The updated results — which now account for both University of Minnesota-Twin Cities students and students on the Duluth campus who pay a fee to GAPSA — reveal that Alfonso Sintjago received 51.5 percent of the vote and Scott Petty received 39.1 percent. The revised figures don’t affect the election’s outcome.
This was the first year that election officials used separate ballots for students at the medical and pharmacy schools on the University’s Duluth campus, ACEC adviser Anna Sturdevant said.
This could have created some misperceptions with ballot results, said Syressa Lewis, another ACEC adviser, as the original results didn’t factor in Duluth campus votes.
“With the UMD campus, they aren’t classified as Duluth students,” Lewis said. “[They] are University of Minnesota-Twin Cities medical and pharmacy students who are enrolled through our [Twin Cities] campus.”
Souk Phaengkhouane, a GAPSA member and pharmacy doctoral candidate on the Duluth campus, said he voted in the elections this year and has done so since he got to the Duluth campus four years ago.
He said he believes there was a higher turnout of students from the Duluth campus this year because GAPSA’s executive board members made a greater effort to include them than in past years.
“Sometimes we do get forgotten that we’re part of the University of Minnesota since we’re separated by distance,” he said.