Proofread!

Win some, lose some

“It really puzzled me at first, but then I figured out it was a proofreading error.”

“You're kidding! Is this like the infamous ‘butterfly ballot’ in Florida in 2000?”

“Oh, it's much, much worse. The candidate in question vanished! And so did his election hopes.”

I thought “Steve” had reported to me all there was to say about the student council election at American River College in Sacramento. My friend (and former student) had served as a poll worker during last week's balloting and thus enjoyed a front-row seat during the battle between the right-wing Christian incumbents and the “Change” coalition that challenged them.

The Change slate won a sweeping victory, taking six out of seven positions for student association officers and eight out of ten positions for at-large representatives. On Friday, when Steve sent me the link to ARC Students for Change, I noticed that Change candidate Cody Lathe was the only candidate for a leadership office who lost his race to the right-wing candidate (the so-called “ARC Students 4 Liberty”). Poor sucker. All his friends win, but he's left out in the cold. How did he lose when he was part of a very successful slate?

There's the rub! Are you really part of a slate if you're missing from the slate card? Steve gave me a scan of a flier that was widely distributed on campus last week. It's the Slate change card. Check it out:


Yep. Cody is missing. Someone forgot to list the Change candidate for director of public relations. That opened the door for the victory of Slavik Gurmeza, the extremely lonely sole member of the “Liberty” gang now represented among the officers of the ARC student association.

Now I'm just guessing here, but I expect that the other student association officers will give a very close reading to any press releases that Slavik prepares on behalf of the ARC student government.

Proofreading. It's a good thing.