DeKALB — With 29 seats open, the SGA has ceased holding candidate meetings for the 2020 SGA elections, with the official polls taking place from 9 a.m. March 24 to 6 p.m. March 25.

There will be at least eight polling stations: Barsema Hall, the nursing building, New Hall, Founders Memorial Library, DuSable Hall, Latourette Hall, the Holmes Student Center and the music building. The Board of Elections is working to reserve more polling stations. Students can vote at any of these polling stations or in an online poll on Huskie Link.

After the polls close, results will be announced by 6 a.m. March 27.

There are 25 senator positions open, and the other four open slots are executive positions: president, vice president, treasurer and student trustee.

There were six candidate meetings in total, but candidates are only required to attend one or set up an individual meeting if they could not attend the scheduled meetings.

During these meetings, students learned all about the candidate requirements, the different positions, bylaws and various sanctions on the election day Sabrina Self, chair of the board of elections and deputy speaker, said.

An example of the sanctions is that there cannot be a Snapchat filter promoting a candidate within 100 feet of a polling station on election day, Self said.

The list of sanctions and bylaws that candidates are required to know can be found on Huskie Link under governing documents on the SGA page.

Also during the candidates meeting, those who attended were given an executive branch or senators packet. Although candidates could pick up both packets, they can only run for one position. Once they get that packet, they fill it out, and get either 300 signatures if they are running for an executive branch position, or 50 signatures if they are running for a senator position, Self said.

The last day to turn the election packets in was Friday.

The ballot will be posted Wednesday on Huskie Link and in the Holmes Student Center OASIS. Once the ballot is posted, candidates are able to campaign until the official election day.

Self said it is SGA’s job to advocate for students, so the upcoming elections are extremely important.

“Participating in any election is really important because you need to advocate for yourself at that moment,” Self said. “We don’t want to put somebody bad in office. We want to put the best people in office, and that is up to the people to decide.”

SGA President Naomi Bolden said SGA makes a lot of decisions on behalf of the student body and has a direct connection to administration, which many students that do not vote do not know about.

Election Commissioner Devlin Collins said students should run in the elections because he wants to reach out to other communities that do not necessarily have a voice on campus.

“This campus is always looking for the next big leader of the students here, and this campus is so diverse, but the diversity is never shown,” Collins said. “I just want to hear about other perspectives of how this school is, or other points of views.”