Close calls: Losing by a hair

Shen was about to watch “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” at the Princeton Garden Theatre when the USG elections managers announced the election results in an e-mail to the undergraduate student body on Nov. 26. When she checked her Blackberry, she learned that she had received 152 votes — just one vote shy of the 153 votes earned by Dylan Ackerman, one of two senator-elects. Dillon Sharp was also elected, with 199 votes.

“I was like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ ” she said. “That’s when it all started flowing: That’s one of my friends who forgot to vote. It was just one kid.”

Shen immediately e-mailed the USG election managers to inquire about a runoff, but she never received a response.

USG elections manager Tony Xiao ’12 said in an e-mail to The Daily Princetonian that the elections managers monitor and address candidate concerns through a dedicated e-mail account. “A host of issues were brought to our attention and to my knowledge they were all appropriately addressed. In addition, neither us nor the Senate received any complaints,” Xiao said.

The two candidates running for class senator who receive the most votes automatically win, according to the USG constitution.

“It really proves that every vote counts,” Shen said. “One vote. You never really understand that until a race like this happens.”

Kinnari Shah ’14, who assisted Shen with her campaign, said she was surprised at the outcome of the election.

“To lose by one vote is ... like one person who didn’t click on her name could have made a difference for her,” she said. “I did think she would win. She was out campaigning to all the kids in her classes, going to all the kids in the dining hall. She put a lot of effort into it.”

Gabrielle Cole ’13 faced a similar situation, losing the race for Class of 2013 senator to Bruce Easop by just four votes. Andrew Blumenfeld was the other candidate to win election, with 287 votes, 38 votes more than Cole received. Easop is also a staff writer for the ‘Prince.’

“Obviously I’m disappointed,” Cole said of the results. “It’s always easier to lose by a hundred points than by a small amount, because then you feel like it’s in your grasp.”

After she got over the shock of her defeat, Shen said, she found herself turning to religion.

“I felt this was God’s way of saying, ‘You could have had the race, you had what it took to get there, but this isn’t what I want for you now,’ ” she explained. “That helped me get over the race a little better — it had a religious effect on my life. It wasn’t up to me.”

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She added that she had prepared herself for disappointment, as she knew it would be very difficult to reach the entire freshman class in her campaign.

“I didn’t go in cocky,” she said. But as students were deciding who to vote for, “I saw some of my friends sitting there being like, ‘Who’s got the coolest name?’ So you can’t know everybody,” she said.

Shen noted, however, that she had been reasonably confident of her chances at winning because of the support of her sorority Kappa Alpha Theta and the knowledge that she “reached out to a lot of different crowds.”

Meanwhile, Cole said she felt in retrospect that she could have been more proactive in her campaign. “I didn’t campaign much ... Mostly it was just going door to door and talking to people,” she said.

But Cole still hopes to be involved with the USG because student government is one of her passions. “Obviously this was a hard loss, because I was trying to get back into [student government] and the loss happening again was a little depressing,” she said. “But I guess I’m an eternal optimist. This is not the last you’ve heard of me.”

Cole served as Class of 2013 vice president her freshman year but was disqualified for violating election rules in her bid for reelection in April.

Shen said she is unsure whether she will run for a USG position in the future. “I want to really be open for something else,” she said, “but I’m going keep my eye open for any appointed positions that come along the way.”

Less than half the undergraduate population voted in this year’s USG presidential election, with only 2,185 votes cast for USG president. The races for Class of 2014 and Class of 2013 senators saw even lower participation, with 1,720 and 789 votes cast, respectively.