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Sunday, October 23, 2005

Petition Candidates Lose Alumni Assoc. Election

More later, but the nominated slate won.

MORE: To roughly put it, the results were 250-150 against the petition slate. There are interesting numbers here.

In the 2005 trustee election, which is all-media (voting via internet, snail mail, etc.) 24.3% of alums voted—that’s 15,334 people—and since multiple votes could be cast, there were 35,107 votes. 48% of voters gave at least one vote to Robinson; 45% to Zywicki.

This was affirmative voting, meaning every voter could give one vote to as many candidates as they wished. The average voter gave the nod to 2.29 candidates. There were two petitioners.

Now in this election for the Alumni Association Exec. Cmte. only those in Hanover at 11am today could vote. (That is something the petition slate platform promised to change: they want all alumni voting in all elections. And isn’t internet voting easier to count, anyway?) So there were between 400 and 500 alums voting. That’s 3% of the group who cast ballots in the trustee election. Much less representative of the alumni body. And very representative of Boston and Hanover natives.

Assuming 450 voters today, that is roughly 0.73% of the 62,000 living alums. Compare that to the trustee election, in which alums could securely vote via their computers, where a full 25% of alums were able to cast a ballot. This election represents a limited ground game, not the general feelings of Dartmouth alumni.

All of this is to say that it would be very specious indeed to claim that this election was an expression of broad opinion, or an end to a movement.

UPDATE: New York Sun reports here.

UPDATE: More posting here.

Posted on October 23, 2005 03:27 PM. Permalink