ASEWU elections have been greatly affected by COVID-19 this year.

ASEWU elections have been delayed a week with primaries now being held on April 14-16. The general elections will be held April 28-30. 

Voting will be done exclusively online on the website vote.ewu.edu .

According to ASEWU Director of Election Gloria Bravo, students will log in with their SSO number. The website will give directions on how to vote, as well as providing readers an aloud mode for visually impaired students.

With Washington state Governor Jay Inslee exercising his emergency powers to issue a “stay-at-home” order, as well as issuing a social distancing policy of at least six feet between people, running for a political office in the middle of this crisis is difficult for everyone involved in the ASEWU election process.

“The biggest thing right now is that all of the events regarding the election process have been cancelled,” Bravo said. 

Bravo said the debate between candidates running for ASEWU president will still take place, however, via Zoom. The debate will take place on April 23.

Bravo said that ASEWU has promoted the election events via social media, as well as members of ASEWU promoting those events via their personal social media accounts.

ASEWU reached an 11.4% voter turnout last year. According to Bravo, before the COVID-19 epidemic, the goal was to reach a 20% voter turnout. Now, the goal is to at least reach 11.4% voter turnout with all the voting and election events being done exclusively online.

EWU student Lloyd V. Dees is a hopeful candidate running for ASEWU president.

Dees has had a bit of a difficult time campaigning. 

“One of the biggest things I was looking forward to running is to meet people in person,” Dees said. “I can’t really do that right now.”

Dees said the hardest part is not being able to make a personal connection with people. He also said that many candidates are sharing with each other the best methods to campaign this election season.

The current ASEWU administration is working around the problems that COVID-19 has on the election process to provide the needs to both voters and candidates.

The Easterner will have further coverage of the ASEWU elections prior, during and following the election process.