There was an air of disbelief after Student Government Elections Commissioner Danielle Padgett read off the results of the student body vice presidential race Thursday afternoon.
“With 48.98 percent of the votes, we have Lee Goble, who will be facing Brian Samples in a runoff, who had 47.47 percent of the votes. You may resume campaigning—”
Padgett went on to say the runoff will be held Feb. 24 and 25, but she was drowned out by the gasps and groans from several SG members gathered in the Leadership and Service Center.
Neither Samples nor Goble appeared particularly pleased with the results. After a violation back-and-forth between the pair over the last two weeks, both were looking forward to the election’s end.
“I would really just like to move on from all of this, so the runoff is the worst possible scenario, really,” Samples said after the announcement. “We’ll see what happens.”
Goble didn’t have much to say either.
“Didn’t lose," he said. "Didn't win."
The results were announced Thursday after both the outstanding violation and appeal filed against Goble were dropped earlier in the day. At that point, a hearing with the Constitutional Council was no longer needed, and the Elections Commission decided to make the announcement.
“Of course, a candidate does have to get 50 percent plus one vote,” Padgett said, “so if a lot of people voted for neither, then it wouldn’t allow either of them to get to 50 percent.”
Turns out, a lot of people voted for neither.
In fact, 146 different write-in candidates showed up on the results sheet, including several other executive office candidates, “Turd Ferguson” and Thad Moore, former Editor-in-Chief of The Daily Gamecock. Both the race for student body president and the race for student body treasurer saw 56 write-in candidates apiece.
This was the first year students had an online write-in option, which made voting for a random candidate much easier. In the past, those looking to cast a write-in vote had to do so by hand in the SG office.
“Having [the write-ins] online, it gives students more of an option to vote for whoever they want,” Padgett said. “Whereas before it was either this person, this person or you have to walk all the way somewhere in the Russell House to make a different vote, which kind of discourages you from doing that.”
With all votes from the student body vice presidential race tallied, the number of voters rose to 4,087, which was about 1,000 votes shy of SG's goal.