The student body president election will proceed to a run-off between Elizabeth Adkins and Maurice Grier said chairperson of the UNC Board of Elections Paul Kushner.
“Elizabeth was the leading vote-getter with 44.3 percent of the vote after accounting for the invalid votes. Maurice had 22.7 percent of the vote,” Kushner said.
He said the board of elections sifted through more write ins than usual, and not just for write in candidates like Travis Broadhurst, who was running a write-in campaign but could not be on the ballot because he did not get enough signatures.
“There were a lot of rewrite in votes this time, and a lot of write ins weren’t counted,” Kushner said. “We did not count the write ins for people we knew were ineligible for the position, such as Harambe and Jesus.”
Elizabeth Adkins said she’s ready to continue campaigning and learned a lot from the campaign process.
“I just want to say that we are really excited that we are going to a runoff election with Maurice, and that we will have more time to be able to talk with students about why we believe we are the best candidate,” she said.
Kushner said the 2,387 students who turned out in the election was pretty low in general, but Adkins said she was thankful for the number given the date of the election.
“We are very excited that so many students came out to vote on the first day of spring break. We’re very happy to have received the most votes so far and we look forward to having more time to engage with students.”
Maurice Grier is behind Adkins in votes, but 33 percent is still up for grabs and Grier is after it.
