Sacramento State students came out to vote in record numbers for the Associated Students, Inc. election this year and chose Roberto Torres as next year’s ASI president.

See the ASI results page for complete election results.

Torres faced off this year against Mirella Garibay, winning the position with 44 percent of student votes. Over 13 percent of the student body voted this year, compared to a mere 5 percent last year, with several factors contributing to what was one of ASI’s highest voter turnouts in years, including more aggressive campaigning and voter recruitment.

“We’ve had the best turnout in the past decade,” said Eric Santana, government major, who worked on the election with the Office of Governmental Affairs. Santana said that the proposed fee increases were the major reason for the huge turnout this year.

While Team Provide lost the presidential vote, they did have significant victories. Shawn Smith won 51 percent of the vote for executive vice president and Terry Martin won vice president of finance with nearly 60 percent.

“It feels better than ever,” Martin said. “I’m so happy right now? I was running against a sorority president; I was nervous.”

“He’s definitely very into the position; I think he’s going to do great things for us,” Mallory Lewis, biology major, said.

Lewis said that she voted for Martin based on the content of his candidate statement and used the same criteria when she decided to cast her vote for Torres.

“I didn’t vote for anyone that didn’t bother to type up a personal statement,” Lewis said. “I think that shows lack of responsibility or commitment to what they’re trying to do.”

Though excitement ran high, candidates seemed low on energy before Miguel Cervantes announced the results. Torres summed up the end of what was a busy and competitive election with two simple words: “It’s over.”

“I think today was the culmination of everything,” Torres said, including increased campaign visibility.

However, Torres said that more could have been done to highlight the debates, like providing more seating for students to encourage campus participation, which would have helped increase voter turnout. Torres said that he would like to see this idea implemented in next year’s election.

In other election results, fee increases for Regional Transit and the Recreation Sports department passed. On the clubs ballot, the College Democrats took the majority of votes with 4.51 percent.

Measure 1, the initiative to raise student fees to benefit the athletic department, was rejected by students. The measure failed by 14 percentage points despite an extensive marketing effort by the department and its student-athletes.

Measure 4, which would have raised fees to provide additional funding for ASI, failed with nearly 65 percent voting against the measure.

A proposed State Hornet fee increase of 50 cents was rejected by students by an 11 percentage point margin.

Julia Baum can be reached at [email protected].