The One NIU ticket swept the Student Association Executive Election with the presidential candidate winning by nearly 400 votes Wednesday.

The SA serves as the voice of the student body to the administration and is responsible for allocating the $6.5 million to provide services to students, according to the SA website.

The SA Executive and Senate elections opened 9 a.m. Tuesday and closed 6 p.m. Wednesday. The One NIU ticket was composed of President-elect Giuseppe LaGioia, Vice President-elect Rachel Jacob, Treasurer-elect Brian Robinson and Student trustee-elect Matthew Holmes. The presidential race was the only opposed executive race. All 20 Senate candidates were elected.

“I am ecstatic,” LaGioia said. “This is a position that I’ve been looking forward to since I was a freshman starting out as a senator in the [SA]. I am really happy to represent all the NIU students and I’m glad they see me as being a well-fit candidate for this position. So I’m really ecstatic and looking forward to the next year.”

LaGioia said his first initiative in office will be to get more SA recognition due to concerns over a lack of election promotion and not enough people knowing what the SA is. He said he hopes to have a kickoff party to inform students on the SA’s responsibilities.

Opposing presidential candidate Alex Forgue, who received 226 votes, said he will not pursue any other SA position.

“Honestly, it’s what I expected considering the bias of the [SA] to Greek Row,” Forgue said. “I expected to lose to Greek candidates. I do feel like the [SA] did not do enough outreach to get the students involved enough to actually vote. Either way, win or [no] win, I am still committed to fighting [for NIU students].”

Decreased voter turnout

This year’s presidential election had 843 voters compared to the 2015 presidential race that had 2,315 voters.

This was the first SA election to combine executive and Senate elections in hopes of increasing voter turnout. The Senate approved this bill with a 35-2 vote April 26 after researching 17 schools to find voter turnout increased with only one election.

“I believe it worked, the only thing is that remember that we had two elections this year already, because we had the Senate elections in the fall and obviously we’re having them again in the spring,” said SA Senate Deputy Speaker Robert Kreml, who was reelected Wednesday. “So I that may have confused some people, so starting next year it might be a bigger thing as it becomes an annual reoccurring thing.”

Kreml said the decrease could also be attributed to the lack of advertising on campus and the students’ lack of familiarity with Huskielink.

Election Commissioner Kevin Gordon said the decrease in voter turnout could be due to the amount of candidates that ran for SA.

“I think considering the amount of people we had run and the campaigns that we had it went very well, as far as the voter turnout as well as the candidates and their campaigns,” Gordon said.

Gordon said the SA could improve voter turnout by getting election information out earlier and increase election participation within the SA.