After an unprecedented number of candidates, the NEC 2021 election results are in

After a week of voting, the polls have closed and the results of this year’s new student elections are in.

The Nominations and Elections Committee announced Wednesday night that Moksh Jawa and Maher Abdel Samad, who are both Engineering freshmen, were elected as the president and executive vice president of Class Board 2021, respectively. 

Running against 13 other candidates, Jawa released a campaign video promoting his platform of gear giveaways and social events. 

He narrowly beat his opponent College freshman Lizzie Youshaei by 15 votes. He earned 272 votes out of the 1581 total votes cast for the position. 

Twenty-five candidates also campaigned for eight available positions to represent the freshman class as new student representatives in the Undergraduate Assembly. The newest representatives are Jude Dartey, Mercedes Owens, Kevin Zhou, Sahitya Mandalapu, Ben May, Maher Abdel Samad, Sravya Alla and Will Castner. 

Vice Chair for Elections of the NEC and College junior Jack Weisman was responsible for overseeing the elections process this year. He said he was particularly happy with the number of applications. 

“I’m very happy with the volume of candidates this year,” said Weisman. “Some of the races were very close.”

While past elections have been marred by disqualifications, there were no such issues this year.

For those that didn’t win, Weisman said that they will have other opportunities to participate in student government. 

“Class Boards have internal positions and the UA also has associate memberships that are open to apply for,” he said. “There are still opportunities.”

Makayla Reynolds, the 2018 class president and a College senior, was excited about this year’s newest additions to the Class Board. 

“There were some super close races, and I was happy with the turnout,” she said. “I’m excited for them to start holding events for their class and bring new ideas to the table.”