Q&A with Board of Elections chairwoman Shruthi Sundaram

_Senior Shruthi Sundaram is chairwoman of the UNC Board of Elections committee for the second year in a row.

As the student body president election kicks into high gear, staff writer Trevor Casey sat down with Sundaram to discuss this year’s election._

DAILY TAR HEEL: What made you decide to do a second year as the BOE chair?

Shruthi Sundaram: I’ve been a part of the BOE since my freshman year here, so I figured I would just complete my four years. I really enjoyed doing it over the past three.

Last year, I got the option of continuing on or stepping down and letting somebody else take over as chair, but nobody who was on the board last year had any interest in being chair, so I figured I would just stay on for a second year.

DTH: Will you approach this election any differently than last year’s?

SS: There are a few small things that we’ve changed. For example, we’re going to have a specific meeting for the student body president candidates sometime next week after they’ve been certified. So just small things like that — obviously nothing major is going to be changing.

DTH: Have there been any improvements made to the election process for this year?

SS: Last year we switched to a new system online, and we ran into a few problems with that toward the end of the election. I think a lot of the things that have changed between last year and this year have been technological issues that have kind of worked out.

DTH: Do you think that the election will be drama-free like last year?

SS: I would hope so. As I mentioned Tuesday at the (candidate declaration) meeting, last year we didn’t have to give out a single point to anybody. People are always welcome and encouraged to email us if they have any questions.

Since Tuesday, we’ve been getting a dozen or two emails about just small things that people wanted to clarify. I think people asking ahead of time makes sure that rules aren’t getting broken, and hopefully we’re being more transparent with what we expect of people as well.

DTH: How would you compare last year’s election to the previous year’s?

SS: It was a lot calmer last year, I guess you could say. They were kind of backwards. Two years ago, there were a lot of problems leading up to the election, where last year there were no problems, and then I think a majority of the problems came on actual election day. But with the candidates, everybody pretty much got along­ — nobody got into any big conflicts.

So I guess we’re hoping to see some combination of the two of those, where nothing drastic happens and the election goes off perfectly.

*DTH: *Is there anything you hope to accomplish this year?

SS: I think higher voter turnout would be nice — last year, it was at kind of an all-time low.
But this year, just looking at how many people who went to the interest meetings and stuff, that in itself was a lot higher than people who attended those meetings last year.

So hopefully numbers will go up, and we’re going to put out a lot more stuff to make sure you vote.

Contact the desk editor at university@dailytarheel.com.