Student government officials say a lack of effective communication caused incorrect election results to be released last month.

As a result, some candidates who initially thought they won a seat on an ASMSU assembly did not and others who thought they had lost were actually elected.

ASMSU is made up of two assemblies: the Academic Assembly, which lobbies for issues such as a creating a minors program for students, and the Student Assembly, which works on student life issues such as tailgating regulations.

ASMSU elections were held March 23 and 24, and 1,988 undergraduate students elected 58 candidates onto the student government.

Last week, ASMSU officials received a spreadsheet with the winners listed for each college, but the file only had candidates' identification numbers, along with the results for each college. Because there were no names listed, student government leaders misinterpreted the results and released incorrect tallies.

ASMSU leaders said it was brought to their attention by Academic Assembly Chairperson Dan Weber, who opened the file on his home computer and discovered his results were different than the ones released by ASMSU officials. Weber's original document did list candidate names, but when the same document was opened on ASMSU's office computers, it didn't contain names.

Weber then contacted Student Assembly Chairperson Andrew Schepers and ASMSU Association Director Paul Harmon.

But Harmon, the student government's election committee chairperson, said it was a "human error." The election committee approves candidates and releases the election results.

Schepers said he confirmed that the results were interpreted correctly with John Sturk, chief commissioner of the University Student Elections Commission.

But Sturk said that's not accurate and that Schepers only confirmed elections totals.

"'Are the numbers correct?' was the precise question," he said.

But even with the correct results now known, some candidates say they have been left in the dark.

Garret Bowman, who ran for a James Madison College seat on the Student Assembly, originally lost in the first numbers released, but because of the misplacing of names, he was actually a winner.He said he's just confused.

"I have no idea on what's going on," he said. "All I got was an e-mail that was forwarded to me. It wasn't even addressed to me."

ASMSU officials said they are getting the correct information to ASMSU's Director of Constituent Activism, Joanna Lankerd, so that she can update everyone involved in the situation.