Clark wins SGA presidency, Abazi voted VP

After a month-long saga, junior Katie Clark and her running mate sophomore Kejdi Abazi won the 2016-2017 Monroe Park Student Government Association’s Presidential and Vice President elections.

The unofficial results were announced on Friday afternoon via the SGA website and social media pages.

Clark, an accounting major and Abazi, a biology major, came out victorious in the two-day election against incumbent president Suraj Telhan, who is a junior, and his running mate junior Tristan Ledbetter.

SGA held their second round of presidential elections from April 12-14 after a procedural error caused the first election in March to be invalid. The first elections run by the Membership Committee were thrown out due to procedural errors. The election bylaws which were supposed to be handed out to every candidate were not given. The committee also was following and older set of bylaws.

“There were a few too many errors for us not to have a second election.” said Vincent Ryan, the SGA Chief Justice.

Ryan said election problems have occurred for years and previous Membership Committees who were given the wrong guidelines in the past were able to fix their situations.

The second election was run by the Judicial Branch to ensure that the election procedure was properly conducted, according to Ryan.

Clark said in an email that she and her running mate respect the decision made by the Judicial Branch and believe that fixing problems like this now will better the organization in the future.

Despite the lack of posts on SGA social media accounts regarding  the second election, the election had a higher voter turnout than the first. 49 more individuals voted in the second election, according to an SGA member.

Mary Lee Clark, Contributing Writer