After a week and a half of campaigning, the race for student body officer positions and Student Senate seats came to a close Monday evening, with polls opening at 8 p.m. and remaining open for the next 24 hours.
The most contested race is that of student body president and vice president. Candidates include Alberto Quiroga, Jess Errico, Mia Connell and Taylor Pulliam and their running mates Zach Lewis, Meredith Spence Beaulieu, Gabby Dauntain and Cat Duble, respectively. The office of Student Senate president is also contested with candidates Ryan Dunn, Adam Schmidt and James Withrow. All other major student body officer positions are uncontested.
Anna Kate Whitfield, a fourth-year studying political science and the Board of Elections chair, discussed the online process students will need to go through to vote for their 2018-2019 student government officers.
“Voting is all online,” Whitfield said. “It’s on getinvolved.ncsu.edu . … [Students] login and it prompts them through voting. It’ll automatically prompt them to vote for the senators in their college and all the student body officers. If they live in housing, it’ll prompt them to move over to the IRC president. … All the questions are not required, they can choose what they want to vote for and what they don’t want to vote for. Super simple, all online.”
Members of the Board of Elections will set up polling locations around campus to advertise voting for Student Government positions for students. According to Sabrina Baker, a fourth-year studying fashion and textile management and member of the Board of Elections, polling locations will be set up in Wolf Plaza from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and in Talley Student Union from 4:30 to 8 p.m. on Tuesday.
“We’ll have laptops for people to vote on,” Baker said. “We’ll also have the voter guide so they are educated voters before they vote. We’ll also have pizza and stickers for people who do vote.”
Whitfield also said that the likelihood of a runoff between the presidential and vice presidential candidates is high because there are four tickets. In the event of a runoff, candidates will have Wednesday to campaign and voting will begin at 8 a.m. on Thursday and last until 8 p.m.
“It’ll look exactly the same,” Whitfield said in reference to students voting in the runoff election. “Same website, the ballot will look exactly the same. They log in the same way, it’ll just be a much shorter ballot. They’ll have less options to vote between.”
The Board of Elections will not have polling locations in the event of a runoff. Whitfield said that the main purposes of the polling locations are to encourage students to vote and troubleshoot technical difficulties students may have online.
According to Whitfield, the Board of Elections hopes to increase the number of voters from last year’s total, which was 5,785 votes, through social media efforts.
“A lot of publicity, social media heavy is our goal,” Whitfield said. “Our snapchat filters, we’re hoping, are super popular and people see them and vote. We’re lucky in that candidates do a lot of our publicity for us because they’re out there trying to get people to do the thing we want them to do to, which is vote.”
Justin Lindemann, a third-year studying environmental science and political science and member of the Board of Elections, discussed the importance of students taking the time to submit their votes.
“If you really care about what’s happening in your college community and especially if you live here and go to classes here, it’s especially important to vote for certain things,” Lindemann said. “It’s also good practice for state elections, local elections, and national elections just to be educated, participate in your community, whatever community that is.”
Students can vote for student body officer and Student Senate candidates at getinvolved.ncsu.edu until Tuesday at 8 p.m. Election results will be announced Tuesday at 10 p.m.
