In the midst of the beginning of SGA’s new election cycle, a new election director was appointed with a unanimous vote on Feb. 10.
After a vote of refusal for another candidate, Lily Aktaa, sophomore, was elected to lead the new cycle and get more students involved in the voting process.
“As election director my goal is to boost voter engagement within the UMKC community while also keeping students informed about candidates,” said Aktaa, who is studying biology.
Aktaa said that she would try to get more students interacting with SGA by having events where students would get to meet their candidates.
“In order to get more students to vote, I plan to enhance voter education and introduce incentives to encourage more students to participate in the election process,” said Aktaa.
Andrew Tracey, speaker of the SGA Senate and senior studying sociology, talked about the aim for the next weeks.
“The election director will come back to us at this next meeting and help us find some goals for the next election,” said Tracey. “We’re trying to straighten out which divisional councils would like their own election and which would be under SGA.”
Voting will take place in the couple of weeks leading up to spring break, and students who are interested in the roles should start applying in mid-March.
“From there, there’s a one-or-two week period where they accept the applications and then there’s a week of voting,” said Mallory Gard, a third year in the six-year BA/MD program studying liberal arts.
During the meeting the group also passed two pieces of legislation, one which created an election code and the other dealing with fraternity and sorority affairs.
“The passage of the election code is pretty monumental considering that we haven’t had an election code for a long time,” said Tracey. “ We’re taking a big step forward toward ensuring clear, efficient and effective elections moving forward.”
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