Ms. Vieira witnessed how her office was ransacked for over a week while the candidates made over 300 buttons to give out to their followers. The pounding of the button machine and the roar of the candidates has never been louder. Indeed this year is a great year for the student body government. This is in part due to the fierce competition from the candidates themselves, but also small yet important changes in the way the elections are carried out.
Mr. Macholz, the head of the elections, has created new set of standards and changes for the students who wish to participate in the student body government. They are all fairly rudimentary and include a 4/5 Uniform usage policy, a clean deans record and a signature from all of your teachers. By themselves these requirements do not deter most candidates. The real change in the elections and the reason why this year they are so fearsome is the new ticket system.
The ticket system resembles that of the current U.S. government’s electoral system in that the president and the vice president have race together and are voted for together. The implication of this is that now the candidates have to put their campaign efforts to the ticket, and not just on themselves. This provides a built in hierarchy for campaigning that the ticket may choose to follow. The people who are running for president may spend the majority of their time giving speeches and talking to people hand to hand, while the people who run for vice-president may choose to recruit campaign managers, make posters and help out his or her partner in general.
Given the ticket system, the current candidates in no particular order are:
1. Kelvin and James
2. Lashae and Benjamin
3. Lizbeth and Reynaldo

The elections will be held on Friday, October 16, 2009.