On November 7, students were given the opportunity to re-vote in the Executive Board (E-Board) elections following allegations of possible cheating in the initial voting process. While the initial voting period was from October 25 to October 27 using the Ayala Pollingworks site, this was changed as students had to manually fill in ballots that were hand counted for accurate results.
With the news of there being unfair play amongst candidates, voters who felt that their favorite candidates weren’t being given a fair chance were outraged.
“I personally think that the re-voting was a good idea because I believe some people cheated and I don’t believe that that’s right and fair to the people who actually tried hard to win,” Emma Min (9) said.
Students and teachers who were being fair and were not a part of such voting thought that the new paper vote was a much better alternative to the online voting system. Nonetheless, teachers have emphasized that the elections should’ve just been approached fairly to begin with.
“Kids should just play fair and hold some integrity. We are Ayala kids, we aren’t supposed to do that,” English 9 and AP Research teacher Kimberly Barreras said.
Even though some students did not and could not vote the first time, students like Aiden Cosico (12) still thought that paper voting was the best way to go.
“I like the paper voting way more because there could be no voting fraud and it is a more secure way to vote,” Cosico said.
Multiple running officers repeated their dedication to hard-work and grit towards the voting process, and believed that the supposed cheating ruined the original validity of the vote. Alina Lopez (11), a candidate running for president, was one of those who thought that it wasn’t fair.
“I think that the potential winners definitely worked hard and I think that we all deserve to win in the first place, but again if people are very concerned about the allegations behind the holdings then I think it is fair to do this paper system,” Lopez said. “If this is the best possible way that this whole crisis can be resolved then I’m on board [with using paper].”
Although there were such allegations, Lopez believes that her peers wouldn’t do such a thing and bring such sabotage over each other.
“In all honesty, I truly don’t believe that the cheating was intentional or that anyone had any harm behind it if they did. Personally I think my peers wouldn’t do that because of the risk factor,” Lopez said.
With voting counts being finished over the long weekend, here are the official results from the re-elections:
President: Alina Lopez
Vice-President: Jadelyn Chen
Secretary: Don Kumar
Finance Chair: Amber Lin
UCC Chair: Dylan Rasmussen
Speaker of the House: Dylan Chang
