The race for Mississippi State University’s Student Association Senate and Executive seats officially started Tuesday night, and the hopefuls will begin campaigning full-swing next week. The SA President seat is contested by junior political science majors Roxanne Raven and Cole Wood. Senator Hunt Walk ran unopposed for vice president. 
Elections Commissioner Jamie Aaron said there are about 85 candidates in this election. There are 42 SA Senate contested seats, and five contested Executive Council positions. 
 The seven newly-formed at-large seats, which are elected by the student body as a whole (as opposed to the seats representing individual colleges,) will be filled from a pool of about 16 candidates. During the Feb. 2 election, MSU students will be able to choose four names out of the sixteen to vote for, and the at-large seats will be filled by the seven with the most votes. 
Candidates running for at-large seats could not also run for the College-backed seats.
This year’s election process had major changes compared to previous years – primarily due to the consolidation of the two MSU campus’s SA’s into a single entity and a continuing effort by the student administration to increase participation by the students. 
To compensate for the geographic split in the student body, and to facilitate the voting process in general, MSU students will cast their ballots digitally through Orgsync.com. Previous elections have also been handled online through MyState. 
Aaron said so far the election process has been smooth, with only a few minor errors occuring with the online registration process earlier this week.