After a higher-than-average voter turnout in Tuesday’s SA elections, winners were announced for the positions of president and attorney general, while the race for treasurer will continue in a run-off election in less than a week.Braxton Coombs defeated Jeral Self for the position of president with 64.5 percent of the vote. Blake Jeter was elected SA attorney general with 61 percent of the vote.
Vice president elect Braxton Stowe and secretary elect Whitney Holliday both ran unopposed.
A run-off election between Will Moon and Ross Weems will determine the SA treasurer. A run-off is held when neither candidate earned over 50 percent of the vote.
SA President elect Braxton Coombs said he’s excited about the coming year and about working with the newly elected executive board.
“I’m excited about getting some things accomplished this year,” said Coombs. “I’m going to get to work with some amazing people.”
Current SA president Jeremy Johnson said he was excited about the newly elected SA execuitives.
“I feel great [about the election], regardless of who won tonight I knew that the next administration was going to have great leadership and they’re going to do great things,” Johnson said.
Phillip Bass, SA election commissioner, said the elections went well despite some technical difficulties at the beginning. As a result, the polls remained open until 7:00 p.m.
“We had had a few technical difficulties [with the computers] in the beginning but it was resolved in an appropriate amount of time and it was not an issue,” said Bass. “To cover our bases we extended voting for an hour.”
Over 2,100 students participated in the election, an increase of around 400 from last year, Bass said.
The run-off for treasurer will occur Feb. 26, Bass said, and polling places will again be in the Library and the Union. Until then, the run-off candidates are allowed to continue campaigning.