The annual Associated Student Government elections took place last week, where a president, vice president and amendments to the ASG constitution were voted on.

This year only one candidate, Michael Duncan Stevens, running for president, actually made it on the ballot. Despite this, a few candidates, Ashley Magana Mendez and Brandon Orick, launched write-in campaigns — for president and vice president respectively.

Stevens won the election 66 votes to Mendez’s 55, yet for unknown reasons, he declined to accept the position, leaving Mendez as the winner and ASG’s next president. Orick, on the other hand, wrangled up 52 votes — a whopping 51 more than he needed to win an unopposed race.

Additionally, changes to the ASG constitution that mostly revolved around simple language changes were approved 71 votes to 9.

Adding the candidate votes together — even assuming nobody voted for both president and vice president — sums to a total of 173 votes. Clackamas Community College has a total of 6,616 full-time equivalent students, meaning approximately 97.4% of students didn’t vote at all. Though full-time equivalent is not necessarily an accurate picture of the total number of students on campus, it’s safe to say 100-something votes is a tiny percentage of the college’s population. The figure, 97.4% of students, is ostensibly shocking but not actually out of the ordinary. An article from The Print’s archives dated November 4, 1976 and titled ’96.5% Apathy’ harped on the lack of engagement from students and the fact that such a large percentage of the student body didn’t participate in the ASG elections. The election that year saw 126 votes from an estimated 3,500 students on campus; so while it doesn’t seem like most care now, it’s not clear many ever have.

Congratulations to the winners.