Few Meet Deadline To Run for Congress

Though the candidates handed over their petitions Tuesday, they will not officially be assured a place on the ballot until Thursday or Friday.

Jeremy Tuchmayer, chairman of the Board of Elections, said these 14 candidates are battling for 11 seats.

Tuchmayer said the candidate with the highest number of votes wins the election. "All congressional seats are done by what is called a plurality," he said. "All other elections are done by majority votes."

Student Congress represents 26 districts, a total of 37 seats.

The 12 undergraduate candidates are freshman Robert Shapiro and freshman Rose Miller for District 11, junior Mark Townsend for District 12, freshman Kimberly Turner and freshman Allison Perry for District 14, freshman Nathan Cherry and freshman Seth Floyd for District 15, freshman Christa Cottemond for District 16, freshman Haroun Habib for District 17, freshman Thomas Sweeney for District 18, sophomore Matthew O'Brien for District 20 and junior Andrew Wagner for District 21.

Districts 1 through 9 are graduate districts and contain 12 congressional seats. But only two graduate students got the 10 required signatures to be put on the ballot.

Gregory Wahl, a law student, is running for District 1, and Elmarie Bodes, a graduate toxicology student, is running for District 7.

But Speaker of Congress Alexandra Bell said the addition of write-in candidates will boost the number of Congress members. "There are typically about eight to 10 write-in candidates every year," she said.

Bell also said the low turnout for Congress is an issue that she and Tuchmayer hope to change after the election.

"We are going to think of a new way to district Congress because this is not working well," Bell said.

She said the lack of response for on-campus districts is because some students do not know where they will be living on campus until later in the semester.

But Bell said she was not fazed by the low number of undergraduate candidates for on-campus districts.

"On-campus seats will be filled -- they always are," she said.

And despite the lack of interest, Bell still believes there are ample students capable of the job. "I am pretty confident that there are 37 students on this campus to do this," she said. "It is a big responsibility, but it is not that hard."

The University Editor can be reached at udesk@unc.edu.