Associated Students of Portland State announced their election results today at the Simon Benson House at 12:30 p.m.
This year’s student government president will be Leila Forbes and vice president will be Kaitlyn Verret, both from Unite PSU.
“This has probably been the most hardest and challenging month of my life,” Forbes said. “The fact that we won really validates the struggle we put into this and all the turmoil that happens alongside elections. I’m totally amazed we won by four votes. Almost disbelief, but there’s so much excitement.”
Voting began on April 11 and polls closed on April 29. With the original goal of 3000, 1401 students voted overall.
“I think that there obviously needs to be more turnout to at least 10 percent,” presidential candidate for ASPSU Trevor Jacobson said prior to the announcements. “If you look across the nation, it is common for it to be 2 to 4 percent across the nation so we’re not entirely out of that range of what’s normally happening, but we really need to strive for a more wider student involvement.”
Student voter turnout was a big focus this year, according to student government and Greek organization adviser, Candace Avalos.
“I am A-OK with [the turnout],” Avalos said. “Two years ago when I first started our highest was 1484; I was aiming for at least 1484 so to come pretty close, I’m pretty happy about that.”
This year students voted for the Smith 2020 Referendum, a proposal to renovate the current Smith Memorial Student Union. 45 percent voted yes and 55 percent voted no. The referendum included three building options. For those who voted for “yes”, option A had 45 percent of the vote, option B had 44 percent and option C had 40 percent.
The following is a list of the remaining positions elected. For the senate, only 14 out of the 16 won due to ties in voting.
Senate:
Kaitlin Hoback
Salih Mahmood
Mustafa Almuzel
Cheryn Trapp
Jaclyn Humphry
Emily Korte
Zia Laboff
Kimberly Ponce
Josie Claus
Write-ins for senate:
Alex Herrera
Anneka Henry
Ahmed Qadri
Rawand Rasheed
Yanyi Li
SFC:
Xavier Coleman
Patrick Staton
Sulakha Hassan
Betheleham Daniel
Write-ins for SFC:
Mahamadou Sissoko
Andy Mayer
Jemila Mohamed