USC in View: The election that wouldn’t end

It’s February 28. Reading week is over, students are back on campus and scrambling to get back on track before St. Patty’s day. In any other year, I would most certainly not be writing a post about elections—but here we are. In case you’ve been living under a rock, the basics are that the USC vote website got hacked, the results were deemed invalid, and there is now going to be a re-vote—this week actually, with voting starting tonight at midnight and closing Thursday at 8 p.m.

Oh, and in the meantime the hacker has come forward and is likely going to be criminally charged, but that’s old news now.

Remember these guys? Me neither.

In fact, this whole election is pretty much old news now, and that’s a shame. After a record-setting voter turnout (over 10,000 votes cast), the revote is unlikely to yield more than a handful of votes, mostly from ardent supporters, USC insiders and, well, the Gazette staff. But I’m not sure I can really blame students for not voting a second time. It’s not that it takes a lot of effort to click a button on a website (how often do you like something on Facebook a day? It’s literally that easy to vote), but it does take a lot of effort to get informed, get excited and feel like your vote counts for something. When that all goes down the drain, and then you go drink your face off in Cancun for a week, it’s really hard to reignite the political fire.

Our four candidates have returned from a break and a blackout with significantly less fervour, but still encouraging votes. Claire tweeted “Remember the Bear. Remember to #voteclaire. But do you remember why? #voteusc.” A fair question, especially considering most students would have to answer “no, not really.” Jon has mostly been retweeting supporters, although he came out of the gates with a more chipper attitude than his initial reaction to the revote, tweeting “Long Jon Silver – ready to sail the 7 seas again! #allaboard #votejonsilver.”

Logan tweeted “Have your voice be heard again. Re-vote tonight at midnight#lovelogan,” and also retweeted support from followers.

Adam has been following a similar strategy, but accompanied it with a blog post he penned on his personal blog that urged voters to look at each candidates’ reaction to the hack as an indication of their character. I’ll leave it up to you to guess whom he was referring to with the line “I knew how the rest of my team would react to the news. No one was going to cry, no one was going to break down and no one was going to go on an angry tirade because, surprise, USC Presidential elections should not and do not define people as individuals.” Hmm…

So that’s where we are now. If you’re reading this blog, I’m hoping you have at least the slightest interest in this election and so I urge you to revote. Yes, it sucks that the site got hacked. Yes, it sucks that we’re still talking about this election almost two weeks after it was supposed to be over. But try to suck it up, log on and cast your vote one (hopefully) last time. Hey, at least no one robocalled you.