Trevor Davis ’21, who was elected one of two undesignated at-large Student Assembly representatives after an unsuccessful bid for the S.A. presidency, resigned from his new position Thursday morning. His replacement by succession, John Dominguez ’20, shared his own plans to resign with S.A. members less than six hours later.
Following Dominguez’s resignation, Nick Matolka ’21, a former contender for executive vice president, is the default winner, according to the chair of the elections committee Shashank Vura ’19.
Davis, who earned the second-most votes in the race for undesignated representative, was elected to the position on Wednesday — along with Uche Chukwukere ’21, the top contender of the race — after losing the presidential race to Joe Anderson ’20. Dominguez, winning third-most votes, was named on Thursday afternoon to replace Davis after his resignation.
In a statement to The Sun, Dominguez expressed his displeasure with the way the S.A. operates.
“In past years, the SA has been bogged down in politics which has rendered a dysfunctional SA and eroded the public’s confidence in the SA,” the statement read. “I hope that you will all continue moving the SA beyond politics and toward substantive impacts on the student experience.”
“As the next Assembly debates the next Byline decisions, I hope to be practicing my Spanish while sipping a margarita,” Dominguez wrote.
C.U. Nooz-endorsed Davis, whose original bid for S.A. presidency rested entirely on the platform of “[adding] something impressive-sounding” to his resume, alluded to public distrust of S.A. in an interview with The Sun following his resignation.
“The 1,800 or 1,500 students … who decided to vote for me clearly thought my campaign was serious enough or that the S.A. was worthy of being mocked enough to make the decision that they made,” Davis said in an interview with The Sun.
“Cornell, my one promise this campaign was to put an S.A. position on my resume. Which is why, now that the promise has been fulfilled, I am proud to announce that I will be stepping down from my position on Student Assembly, effective immediately,” Davis’ statement read.
Dominguez was named Davis’ successor after several hours of deliberations on Thursday morning by the elections committee, which was initially unsure of the results due to errors in vote counting.
In an initial election report sent out on Wednesday afternoon, Cat Huang ’21 and Chukwukere were elected as S.A. undesignated at-large representatives. However, Huang was unable to assume the position due to her election to S.A. executive vice president, making Davis the “roll-down” winner.
According to Vura, due to a “software issue,” the initial report used incorrect tabulation methods, which included winners of the presidential and vice presidential races when counting votes for the other positions.
The S.A. released the full results on Thursday afternoon that eliminated winners of the presidential and vice presidential races from the vote count of other races.