By Xarah Yap

By AJ Alarcon

The Ateneo Senior High School (ASHS) Commission on Elections (ComElec) released on Friday, October 24, the results of the Strand Vice Chair Elections (SVCE) 2025, following the election day on Wednesday, October 22.

The elections recorded a 72.77% voter turnout with 719 out of 980 Grade 11 students eligible to vote, excluding the junior core members of the commission’s en banc.

The winning candidates and their respective winner percentages are as follows:

• Accountancy, Business, and Management (ABM): Lucas Miguel Santiano, 53.01% [166/210 turnout]
• General Academics (GA): Kezia Monique Gonzales lone candidate, 54.97% [151/199 turnout]
• Humanities and Social Sciences (HUMSS): Marian Coreen Del Rosario lone candidate, 56.59% [129/160 turnout]
• Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM): Cyan Paolo Blanca, 53.11% [273/411 turnout]

Ensuring Electoral Transparency 

The ASHS ComElec introduced changes to this academic year’s (AY) SVCE, specifically on-site voting and a live voter count in collaboration with ASHS Programming Varsity (ProgVar).

With these adjustments, the commission had already anticipated a lower voter turnout compared to last year’s SVCE, where voting was conducted through Google Forms.

“The main challenge the core sought to prepare for was voters’ apathy,” said ComElec Chairwoman Jeyhia Enriquez.

To address this, a live voter turnout count was conducted and displayed on a television at the first-floor foyer of the Main Building during election day.

The live count was also streamed by the ASHS ProgVar on their Facebook page.

Organization Head Daniel Park explained that the system allowed the presentation slide, created by the commission, to update based on inputs encoded in a Google Spreadsheet by ComElec members.

According to Enriquez, this system aimed to “allow students to be more aware of the impact of their singular vote.”

However, since the process involved manual input and signature collection by precinct commissioners, concerns regarding ballot security and internet connectivity were raised.

Moreover, the commission aims to further engage junior students in the electoral process through voter education.

“These processes, unique to ASHS’s electoral system, prove to be the commission’s strength in truly representing the students’ vote through every option,” Enriquez concluded.

The commission seeks to continue and improve this new system for the next election phase in ASHS, particularly in preparation for the Executive Elections happening later this AY.