Students elected 27 representatives to the Legislative Body (LB) of the Macalester College Student Government (MCSG) on Tuesday. Voters also resoundingly approved an amendment to the MCSG Constitution that gives Program Board chair Erin Miller ’05 voting powers at LB meetings.

Of the 28 representatives who will serve on the LB for the 2004-2005 academic year, 13 have pledged support to the Common Platform, which represents the first organized effort by a group of candidates in MCSG’s recent history. Jesse Mortenson ’05, the most outspoken member of the Common Platform, was not elected, however.

Representatives in support of the Common Platform have pledged to promote four primary tenets: the retention of 100% need-blind admissions, institutional responsibility within practices by the college, efforts to recruit additional domestic students of color, and the creation of a gender-blind option in campus housing.

According to official tallies, 681 students voted in the election, a turnout of approximately 40%. Each voter was instructed to vote for only one preferred candidate, according to residence hall for underclassmen and major for upperclassmen. Each candidate was allowed to send a representative to serve as an official vote counter.

According to Election Procedure Committee (EPC) Co-Chair Dorothe Singer ’06, some official candidates did not send a representative for the vote counting and some failed to meet the deadline for reporting their campaign expenses, neither of which was cause for disqualification of any candidates. However, “overall the elections went well,” Singer said.

Each voter’s selection of only one candidate represented a change in practice from previous years, when students were able to select multiple candidates depending on the number of representative positions assigned to their constituency. According to MCSG President Michael Barnes ’06, Singer and EPC Co-Chair Tobias Pforr ’06 decided on this change in order to simplify the counting of votes and to address issues of fairness.

“You shouldn’t get another vote just because your major is more popular,” Barnes said, explaining the reasoning behind the change. He added that he was not involved in instituting this change.

Barnes explained that he did not favor a particular voting practice. He said that he was open to discussion on the matter at upcoming LB meetings, as he had heard some students object to selecting only one candidate.

Mortenson, who lost his bid to represent the Social Sciences II majors, opposed the EPC’s implementation of this voting practice.

“The LB really needs to initiate a discussion to come up with a new form of electing the LB,” Mortenson said. “The change in the voting system, arguably, I think did change the results of the election.”

According to Associate Dean of Students Jim Hoppe, who serves as the administrative advisor to MCSG, the EPC invalidated ballots that had check marks for more than one candidate. Hoppe said that vote counters decided to invalidate approximately 40 ballots, mostly due to multiple check marks.

Eliot Brown ’06, one of the official vote counters, said that of the 90 ballots he tabulated, “there were probably four to five invalid ones.” He concluded that juniors and seniors had cast all but one of the invalidated ballots, since the voters had selected candidates representing specific fields of study, not residence halls.

Brown added that on the ballots he judged to be invalid, the voters simply chose all of the candidates who had endorsed the Common Platform. Though Brown said he was unsure if this trend was widespread, he indicated that the invalidation of the ballots he counted represented three lost votes for Mortenson.

Mortenson was one of two Common Platform candidates who lost their races. Mortenson lost by a margin of four to one to Roscoe Sopiwnik ’06, a write-in candidate who decided to run on the Friday before the election.

Asked why he had decided to run, Sopiwnik said that he opposed attempts by Common Platform candidates to dominate LB proceedings.

“Though I agree with a lot of what [Common Platform candidates] say, I didn’t feel they represented the student body accurately,” he said, characterizing their positions as “too progressive.” “I don’t think any legislative board should be one sided. We just need a variety of opinions.”

Mortenson attributed the loss of his race to him bearing “the brunt of anti-Common Platform sentiment” caused by Sopiwnik’s “explicitly anti-Common Platform” campaign posters.

Mortenson cited the 13 Common Platform victories as evidence that “a lot of folks on campus were receptive [to the platform].”

“It’s clear that the Common Platform wasn’t completely wiped out,” he said.

Brown said he had heard of multiple accounts of students voting under constituencies that were not their own to vote against the Common Platform. He named certain instances in which students in different constituencies voted in the Social Sciences II race simply to write in Sopiwnik’s name. Again, Brown was unsure of how widespread this trend was.

Barnes questioned Brown’s claim. “That is completely impossible to judge,” he said. “If certain Mac students were dishonest in voting…you’re doing a dumb thing because you’re not voting for who will represent you.”

“I trust Mac students to be honest for their own good,” Barnes added.

Singer said that elections are based partially on trust. “If people choose to vote for a different constituency than their own, there is little we can do about it in the end,” she said.

Sopiwnik said that he was unaware of any illegal voting.

“[Voters] may have; I don’t know for sure,” he said. “I saw a lot of people who said ‘I voted for you’ and I didn’t know them or their majors.”

Mortenson said that the possibility of students voting outside of their constituencies proved the need for a change in the electoral process.

“In the scheme of things, trying to get to the bottom of that is relatively unimportant,” he said. “What it says is that changes are needed in voting.”

Mortenson suggested separate ballots for each constituency.

The Legislative Body’s first meeting will take place Tuesday in Bateman Plaza outside the Campus Center. Barnes said he will deliver his “State of the Campus” address at this meeting, which is open to the public.