Fun strikes back at Stanford

Caroline Chen:

Thousands of campaign flyers, dozens of Fizz posts and one executive debate later, preliminary results of the 2023 Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) election were announced via email and linked on the ASSU website on Sunday.

Candidates elected in the 2023 election will serve their positions for the 2023-2024 academic year.

While the voter turnout of this year’s general election, at 24.72%, was significantly higher than the previous two years’ turnout of around 17%, turnout has yet to return to 2020 levels when total voter turnout was at 36.64%. This year, 39.44% of undergraduate students and 12.83% of graduate students cast ballots. In 2020, 53.76% of undergraduates and 23.02% of graduates cast ballots.

“We saw an increase in turnout this year from last year, which was one of my big goals, and I think reflective of a lot of engagement on the part of the candidates running — we had more candidates for both UGS and GSC than last year, which certainly helped,” ASSU Election Commissioner Whit Froehlich J.D. ’24 wrote in a statement to The Daily. “There’s still room for improvement, though, particularly among graduate students, many of whom still either don’t know they can vote or just aren’t as aware of ASSU and what it does.”