It was a far cry from Tempe campus elections when Polytechnic campus students elected Kelley Stewart and Maximo Mena as their new student government president and vice president Thursday.
No campaign billboards.
No brightly colored slips of paper soliciting votes.
No controversies about campaign expenditures.
Just a few small signs made on a personal computer, printed out and hung in the Student Union.
But elections for the four-year-old Associated Students of Arizona State University at the Polytechnic campus had one thing in common with Tempe campus elections.
"I think there are very few students interested in voting. They just don't realize the importance of electing a good student government," said Jennifer Treese, the current vice president and one of the people who monitored this year's elections, in an e-mail.
This year, 302 students cast ballots, up from just 162 last year and 260 the year before. Last year's count represented just more than 1 percent of the entire student body, Treese said.
"Last year's turnout was pretty dreadful," said Mike Mader, assistant dean of student affairs on the Polytechnic campus and the adviser to the student government.
He said turnout increased this year "because the candidates did a good job getting the word out."
"We are using Facebook as a way to communicate with people about voting," Treese said. "We also had T-shirts made with election information on them and we gave them out at the candidate forums."
Stewart defeated Matthew McCoy by only seven votes in the election.
"The biggest legacy I want to leave is a policy and procedures manual for our student government," Stewart said.
Stewart hopes that with it, future student legislators will not have to spend the first half of their terms learning their jobs and can instead start serving the needs of the students.
"We are opposed to a centralized student government," Stewart said. "Until we truly model one university, I don't think one student government is appropriate."
One of the biggest reasons to keep the governments separate, Stewart said, is that the campuses are very unique.
"Students here don't even realize how different our services are from Tempe," she said.
Even though the general response to student government hasn't been overwhelming, members feel they serve an important purpose on campus.
Daniel Voica, a senator from the Morrison School and now the treasurer-elect, said, "Being smaller, we can communicate very well with people."
Reach the reporter at: jordan.lapier@asu.edu.
