For the first time in UF Student Government history, all 50 Student Senate seats were awarded to one party. That party is Swamp.
Swamp Party presidential candidate Cory Yeffet and vice-presidential candidate Vivan Nguyen won the Spring 2014 election with about 93 percent of the vote.
Yeffet and Nguyen, the only presidential and vice-presidential candidates on the executive ticket, won with 7,012 votes.
Elliot Grasso, Swamp Party’s Student Body treasurer candidate, won his race with about 82 percent of the vote, beating Taco Libre Party candidate Micaela Montero Dokser by 5,074 votes.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, 7,919 students cast their votes in the Student Government elections. Last Spring’s election had about 10,048 votes, according to Alligator archives.
Yeffet said that winning the election was “incredible.”
“The students spoke, and I’m glad that we’re going to be able to deliver what they want,” he said.
Nguyen said she was in disbelief when she heard the results.
“It hasn’t hit me yet,” she said. “This was one of the best tickets we ever put on.”
Grasso said he was “beyond excited” about the results.
“I’m honored that the students would entrust me with this immense responsibility,” he said.
Supervisor of Elections Justin Hoover announced the winners at 10:30 p.m. and said there were no technical difficulties during the voting process.
Despite having no executive candidates up for election, Students Party officially boycotted attending the election results announcement Wednesday night.
Olga Rodriguez, Students Party president, said she hopes the boycott will show students how corrupt SG is.
“We wanted the opportunity to get students a little more aware of the injustice that’s been going on in this election and in the Student Government as a whole,” she said.
In addition to voting for the executive candidates, students also voted for Student Senate candidates. Each candidate represented either a college or a classification.
Swamp Party won all 50 Senate seats. Kamal Bharti, a write-in Swamp candidate, won one of the 10 graduate Senate seats.
The Students Party and Taco Libre Party candidates did not win any Senate seats.
In total, Swamp Party nominated 49 candidates, Students Party nominated 16 candidates, and Taco Libre Party nominated 33 candidates to appear on the ballot for Senate seats.
Additionally, two referendum questions and a constitutional amendment were listed on the ballot.
One referendum asked students if UF should implement an open-container policy on home football gamedays for those legally able to drink. The other question gauged student opinion on adding a 50-cent-per-credit-hour fee that would be used to fund energy efficiency and renewable energy projects on campus.
About 90 percent of the people who voted on the open-container referendum voted “yes,” and about 65 percent of the people who voted on the green referendum question voted “yes.” About 720 people opposed the open-container referendum, and about 2,180 people opposed the green referendum.
The constitutional amendment on the ballot that posed the question of updating the SG anti-discrimination policy to include genetic information received 4,516 “yes” votes. About 13 percent opposed it.
Micaela Montero Dokser, Taco Libre’s candidate for treasurer, said for having a single platform and no promotion besides social media, landing 16 percent of the vote was pretty amazing.
“I think we ran a taco-tastic campaign,” Montero Dokser said. “There’s nothing I would’ve changed.”
She said Taco Libre Party’s future is undetermined, but the party’s mission will carry on. The group is still considering speaking to Aramark, the company that provides UF’s food services, or even proposing a Student Senate bill.
“Sure, campaigns are about who gets elected,” she said. “But at the end of the day, it’s all about the mission.”
[A version of this story ran on page 1 on 2/20/2014 under the headline “Swamp sweeps Senate, exec ticket"]
Elliot Grasso, Vivan Nguyen and Cory Yeffet celebrate their executive ticket win as well as their party’s total sweep in Senate on Wednesday evening at the Reitz Union breezeway.
