Write-In Candidates Take Advantage of Sparse Field in Council Elections

When Blaise C. Hill '00 got a call from the president of the Undergraduate Council, he was in for a surprise.

"One of my friends thought it would be a good gag if I woke up on Friday morning as the new U.C. representative for Winthrop House," Hill said. "So he kind of secretly enlisted a bunch of his friends and my friends to vote for me."

Hill discovered he had been elected when council President Noah Z. Seton '00 called him with the news.

"I didn't even know that the U.C. elections had occurred," Hill said.

Hill is one of the many write-in candidates who won a seat in this year's council elections. A total of 17 write-in candidates were elected, and in several Houses write-ins won more votes than official candidates did.

Dudley House, which had no candidates, is represented by two write-ins, and Dunster House saw only one candidate for five open seats.

Not every write-in was as shocked as Hill to find they had been elected--several didn't let a lack of formal candidacy stop them from organizing campaigns.

"I was thinking about running at the beginning of the year but I didn't see any posters telling me when," said Hoon-Jung Kim '01, a Leverett House representative.

After discovering she had missed the deadline to become a formal candidate, Kim e-mailed friends in her House asking them to write her in and finished fourth in the six-seat election.

"I figured I wouldn't need too many votes," she said.

Joseph P. Chase '02 had the same philosophy when he started his write-in campaign.

"I saw the signs on the day of the election telling us to vote and realized I had missed the deadline to be a candidate," Chase said.

Chase said he talked to a few friends about his ideas for the council and ended up the overall winner of the five-seat Dunster House election.

The only formal Dunster candidate, Chad A. Wathington '01, came in fourth.

"It was weird to go to uc-vote and see my name as the only name there," Wathington said. "Maybe it's [because of] a distrust in the U.C. or a general apathy on campus. In either case, it's sad."

The increasing number of council representatives elected by write-in vote points is a problem that has been largely unaddressed by the council. Even though the council has worked to increase voter turnout, House elections are consistently uncontested.

Kim said she thinks the council may want to focus as much of its energies on attracting candidates as it does attracting voters.

"I saw one poster in the yard telling candidates to get their petitions in," she said, "but I saw tons of posters in my house telling people to vote."

Kyle D. Hawkins '02, chair of the council's election commission, agreed that low publicity probably contributed to the uncontested races.

"It didn't get publicized particularly well in the Houses," Hawkins said. "I don't think we did a great job getting the word out."

Hawkins, who is also a Crimson editor, said disorganization on the part of the commission caused problems early.

"The election commission had some problems in the beginning," Hawkins said. "It was unclear who exactly was on it."

Fortunately for the council, several of the write-in winners said they are looking forward to joining the student government.

"It's definitely something I want to take seriously," Chase said.

Kim said she also has plans for her time in office. "I have a lot of different ideas," she said.

But Hill declined to accept the unsolicited position of Winthrop House representative.

"It was kind of a joke on me," he said. "And really on the U.C., to tell you the truth."

Wathington predicts the write-in winners may be in for "at least a minor shock" when they attend their first meeting.

Hawkins said that despite the low turnout of candidates, the elections were relatively successful.

"We ran the elections in what I think was a very smooth fashion," Hawkins said. "We've learned from our mistakes."

But some newly-elected candidates are wondering just what they're getting into.

"I'm just a guy who talked to five of his friends and I'm the number-one finisher for my House," Chase said. "I don't know what that says."