Voter turnout for the fall Marquette Student Government elections reached its highest level since before 2000, yet four residential senator spots were left to be appointed and several other races were uncontested.

MUSG Elections Coordinator Daniel Payette, a senior in the College of Arts & Sciences, attributed the jump in votes to the use of an online ballot instead of last year's paper ballots.

"Now that it's gone online and is accessible with a single link, it makes it easier to cast your vote," Payette said.

Twenty registered candidates received 1,111 votes in the final election, almost 400 more than the turnout in fall 2004. The spring election, which includes candidates for MUSG president and executive vice president, has raked in anywhere between 1,500 and 2,400 votes between 2000 to 2005.

"There were some very active campaigners, and write-ins even got about 20 votes," Payette said.

Payette said MUSG tried a different approach to attract residential senator candidates this year. He said word-of-mouth is the most effective method, so MUSG sent senators to hall council and Residence Hall Association meetings to get the word out about the openings.

"This is a case of us going directly to them and (them) saying, 'This is something I might be good at,' and giving it a shot," Payette said.

He said he was pleased with this year's candidates and could tell that "they were genuinely interested in not only winning but representing the students."

However, the shortage of candidates for the off-campus and commuter senatorial positions as well as for the positions within residence halls left the student body with fewer to choose from for its representation in MUSG.

"It depends on the mix of people in the hall for interest," Payette said.

He said the uncontested races were "disappointing and unfortunate" and probably occurred because of a lack of advertising, or because students simply forgot to register for the elections.

"It's hard to advertise (off-campus) because you don't have the luxury of people concentrated in a residence hall," Payette said.

For some commuters, finding out about and running in the election was prohibited by the lack of advertising.

"I wasn't aware that they had senatorial positions available," said Natasha Eslami, a commuter and freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences. Eslami said she would most likely have run for MUSG if she had known about the election.

Payette said he thinks there are several commuter students who would vie for a senatorial seat but guessed that most do not have time to come back to Marquette for the meetings on Thursday nights.

"Unfortunately, it's difficult for commuter students to become as involved at Marquette due to them not being on campus," said Pat Landry, senator for Straz Tower and a sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences.

One commuter senator has already been appointed by the Commuter Student Association; the association will soon choose the other, per MUSG constitution requirements.

Two of the six off-campus senator seats will be appointed by Legislative Vice President Declan Glynn, a senior in the College of Arts & Sciences.

This article was published in The Marquette Tribune on October 4, 2005.