Candidates for next year’s Student Government are allowed to campaign for student votes starting Monday and ending with student body elections on April 6.

This year, there are more than 70 candidates running, including seven for student body president, three for student senate president, three for student body treasurer and two for chief justice.

“There are a lot of really well-qualified candidates this time around,” Jim Ceresnak, student body president, said.

According to Lindsey Pullum, chair of the Elections Commission, candidates have spent spring break planning and budgeting for the next two weeks; putting a lot of effort into developing campaign strategies that will reach students from all parts of campus.

“We’re really excited to see what every candidate has to offer and we’re hoping to have a good, clean race,” Pullum said.

Pullum said that all seven of the student body president candidates are running unique campaigns.

“Two or three candidates are really bent on getting power back into students’ hands,” Pullum said.

Kelli Rogers, Student Senate president, said that while the elections would be very similar to past elections, there should be a lot more campaigning this year because there is a higher number of ambitious candidates.

“This year has more potential than any year I’ve seen to be extremely competitive,” said Rogers.

Pullum said that the race for Student Senate president should be particularly exciting because all of the candidates are strong members of the Senate.

It will be interesting to see how the candidates reach out to the student body, Pullum said.

Only candidates for student body president are advertising their platforms and reaching out to students through Web sites and Facebook groups right now.

Rogers explained that candidates for Senate president, treasurer and chief justice also probably have specific platforms on which they are running, but that their platforms will be more about ethics and leadership due to the pre-determined responsibilities that await them once they arrive in office.

“You’ll see less concrete things about what the candidates want to accomplish and more talk about ensuring students are represented and money is appropriated correctly,” said Rogers.

This is particularly true for the Senate president, Rogers said, because the Senate president is in charge of running the Senate; making sure all the Senate seats are filled, knowing all of the rules of the Senate and ensuring Senate meetings are run smoothly and fairly without unduly influencing the outcome.

The Student Senate president isn’t widely recognized by the student body, she said. However, “it is important for all of the candidates, even for the smaller races, to reach out.”

Student campaigns are mostly funded out-of-pocket and there is no public financing option. Candidates can spend up to $625 of their own money and can accept up to $312.50 of donations for campaign purposes.

According to Ceresnak, the candidate who wins is not necessarily the one with the most signs but is the candidate who talks to the most students and focuses on issues that students care about.

“The campaign finance rules are not a challenge or a setback,” Ceresnak said. “The spending limits are there for a reason.”

According to Pullum, about 6,000 students voted in elections last year.

“I hope that all of the candidates for every race are out there working, but I also hope that they all remember that they’re students first,” said Rogers.

The complete list of candidates and their Web sites and Facebook pages can be found online at students.ncsu.edu/vote.