The Associated Students, Inc. Senate voted in a new senator for the College of Health and Human Services at their weekly meeting Wednesday after going through four run-off votes.
ASI held the run-off election was between Jesus “Kyle” Martinez and Jeffrey Ferguson.
Martinez had the senate position last year and cited his previous experience with ASI as a qualification for the position.
The initial roll-call vote came to 10-6, in favor of Martinez, which ASI Vice President Miriam Hernandez said was not enough of a majority to make the vote. ASI bylaws call for a minimum requirement of “50 percent plus one” of the entire senate. This led to a total of four run-off votes throughout the Senate meeting.
With multiple abstentions, the senate had a difficult time moving forward with the election because they could not come to a majority vote.
Richard Haller, the ASI executive director, had to refer to the ASI bylaws and working rules to try and figure out if the abstentions should be counted toward the number of voters. ASI Chief Justice Jason Jose made the decision to count the abstentions toward the total number of voters.
After the first two run-off votes, multiple senators moved to postpone the election until next week, which failed. The Senate then decided to temporarily table the election to stay on schedule for the agenda.
After seeing a presentation from “Not Alone @ the Beach” by sexual assault victim’s advocate Candis Simmons-Davis, the Senate held another run-off vote. When they still could not come to a majority, they tabled the election temporarily again. The Senate returned to the topic after the rest of the items on their agenda had been discussed and came to a majority vote for Martinez.