The ASUC Elections Council held its first meeting of the semester Saturday to discuss methods of counting students’ votes toward election candidates and review the Voluntary Wellness Honor Pact, a resolution designed to support the mental health and academic success of candidates during the ASUC election season.

The Voluntary Wellness Honor Pact is a resolution that would establish an ASUC bylaw that places limits on the amount of time candidates can spend campaigning, among other rules designed to prevent the mental health of campaigning students from deteriorating. In light of former senator-elect Guillermo Perez’s resignation in April 2016, council members also discussed adding a code to the voting tabulator to calculate the runner-up should an ASUC official step down, according to Elections Council chair Linsha Qi, who previously worked in The Daily Californian’s blog department.

The council began reviewing the Wellness Pact after receiving feedback from both CalSERVE and SQUELCH!. Student Action has yet to administer feedback on the pact, which will be voted on Wednesday.

Qi said the tabulator coder will be working to create a runner-up countback code, which is an algorithm designed to recount the votes for the resigned official and use the voter’s second choice as a replacement. The countback code will be attached to the original voting tabulator code, as opposed to a separate program like it had been last year for the resignation of Perez.

“(The winning senator) resigned immediately after winning and then our tabulator coder, who has returned (from) last year … was actually unable to code the mechanism (that) would go in place if someone were to resign to find a runner,” Qi said. “So they coded it on the side and now they’re going to be coding it in the actual tabulator.”

Qi also mentioned at the meeting that voting will occur from April 10 to 12. The Elections Council will be holding another meeting Friday to approve the Wellness Pact.

Sakura Cannestra is the lead student government reporter. Contact her at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter at @SakuCannestra.

Correction(s):

A previous version of this article failed to disclose that Linsha Qi is a former employee of The Daily Californian’s blog department.