Here He Is, Mr. Harvard

The Mr. Harvard Pageant nomination process and the 2000 presidential election have at least three things in common: competition between hyper-inflated egos, general apathy from the majority of the population, and the apparent losers demanding a recount.

Voters were able to vote multiple times for their preferred candidate, skewing the results, according to Joseph P. Torella ’08, organizer of the pageant and a Crimson editor. After figuring out that tallying the votes using individual IP addresses could solve that issue, the pageant’s cheap sponsors—who were unwilling to pay to prevent multiple-voting in the first place—decided to reexamine the results. As of Tuesday afternoon, 1211 ballots had been cast for the Crimson Yard election alone, probably more than the number of undergraduates who even know about the May 13 pageant.

But not everyone is apathetic. Marc K. Bhargava ’08, who is a candidate for Crimson Yard’s representative and placed second in the online polls to Bryan C. Barnhill II ’08, filed a complaint with Torella. He claims to be ambivalent about the results of the vote.

“But it would be really cool to win, of course,” Bhargava says. Of course.

While the Crimson Yard battle raged, perhaps one-sidedly, upper-class Houses held generally unexciting online elections. Some opted for slightly more innovative methods—Mather held a drag karaoke competition to determine its king.

Back in the Yard—the Elm Yard, this time—one nominee actually voted for rival candidate Daniel Ross-Rieder ’08 in an attempt to avoid performing in the pageant. Why the nominee doesn’t just resign is a mystery, but Ross-Rieder remains confident that he will smash his competition anyway.

“What competition? There is no competition. Remember that. They’re facing what is essentially a professional army against their group of rag-team rebels,” says Ross-Rieder who claims he may get a “full-on bikini wax” for the competition.

But what do potential competitiors say about Ross-Rieder’s chances? “I don’t really see [Ross-Rieder] smashing anything but his ego when he performs,” says Bhargava.

And so the Mr. Harvard mud-slinging begins.