The unofficial results of the election for a new executive vice president of Student Senate indicate that Catie Witt won with 384 votes.

Candidate Jack Cruikshank earned 273 votes, according to the results.

“I was really excited because my freshmen year I joined Student Action Team and that’s what I knew what student government was,” Witt said. “I’ve always wanted to be in this position.”

Witt, a junior communication studies major, said that serving as the executive vice president means that she gets to be the student representative for the Board of Trustees, which she said is a huge honor. Witt also said that they get together and go to Springfield to lobby for issues for Eastern.

Cruikshank, a junior political science major, said he thinks he still has an opportunity to win the executive vice president election despite the unofficial results.

“I think I’m still confident for a win,” Cruikshank said. “I will be challenging these results.”

Cruikshank said he believes the election was conducted improperly, even though these were the unofficial results.

For the election, an email was sent out containing a link, which was meant to count the votes for both of the candidates.

The email was sent out Wednesday afternoon, instead of early Thursday morning. “The link was not valid yet,” Cruikshank said. “Students could click the links and it would go to a page that said not valid because voting started at midnight.”

Cruikshank also said he believed this error confused students who were voting.

“I had quite a few people tell me ‘I tried to vote you but it wouldn’t let me,’” Cruikshank said. “I believe this election was not done how it was intended to be.

Cruikshank said a second email containing a different link was sent out Thursday afternoon.

He also mentioned that the email contained a different link to the website, which allowed students to vote more than once for a single candidate.

“Every student could vote twice, I had some students tell me they could vote more, but I haven’t been able to conform that,” Cruikshank said. “I had a few tell me they couldn’t vote at all.”

This error allowed candidates to receive more than one vote per voter.  Eastern uses a system called Qualtrics, which is an online survey application.

“It’s run by Eastern, that’s where the link took you to,” Cruikshank said. “I was able to vote multiple times, a lot of people were.”

Luis Martinez contributed to this article.

Cameila Nicholson can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].