A candidate for executive vice president of Student Senate said he plans to protest the results of the vote, which were sent to students as a link in an email that may have been sent out twice.

During Thursday’s Student Senate meeting, the unofficial results were released, announcing Catie Witt, a junior communication studies major, had won over Jack Cruikshank, a junior political science major, 374 to 283.

After the meeting, Cruikshank said he planned to protest the results, saying that there were students who were confused when the email containing the link to vote was sent earlier than reported.

Reginald Thedford, student body president, said that Cruikshank made him aware of the email error.

“The only thing that I know is that the email was sent early.” Thedford said. “A second link was sent out at (Cruikshank’s) request.”

Thedford also said that given this information, the election commission as well as the Information Technology Services will meet to look at Cruikshank’s claims and see what had occurred.

“Student’s weren’t able to vote multiple times.” Thedford said. “ In the case that students were able to vote multiple times, then ITS will have a record of it.”

Cecilia Brinker, director of student life, said that the matter would be looked into.

“I can honestly tell you it wasn’t anything in student government’s control,” Brinker said. “It was probably something on a technical level from ITS.”

Brinker said this is probably not the first time where the online election had a glitch or error with the votes.

Brinker also said this was a special election, so the election process was sped up because the person who will fill the position also serves as the student representative for the Board of Trustees.

Brinker said that by the time they noticed the position had become available; there was not enough time to put together an election commission.

“Now, we’re going back and putting that commission together to specifically to review the outcome of the elections and to make sure that this process was fair,” Brinker said. “We will give it our sincere and actually our most thorough review.”

The meeting is set to take place sometime before the official election results are given at the next student government meeting. If it is discovered there was a critical error in the election, Thedford said that a committee would come together to discuss the election at that point.

“We are going to look at the election process, and see what improvements we could make,” Thedford said. “But the current election process is good, it was just a technical error.”

Luis Martinez and Jarad Jarmon can be reached at 581-2812 or dennewsdesk@gmail.com.