Five Class of 2027 College Council representatives and one Class of 2025 representative were elected to Undergraduate Student Government (USG) on Friday, October 20, in an election marked by the lowest number of candidates running in eight years.

First-years Kevin Guo (236 votes), Demetrius Daniel (229 votes), Alex Fuentes (220 votes), Trinity Bledsoe (129 votes), and Andrea Pita Medez (124 votes) were the five candidates chosen for seats on the Class of 2027 College Council from a field of nine who appeared on the ballot. Voting was open from October 16 to October 20.

Daniel and Bledsoe had open complaints filed against them by the Elections and Rules (E&R) Committee because of failures to submit timely budgets. The committee unanimously found that these constituted minor infractions and issued each a 3 percent vote deduction.

USG also held a special election to fill a vacancy in the Class of 2025’s College Council lineup after Danielle Lopez, who had been elected in the spring via write-in votes, resigned. Chad Coen, the only candidate who filed a petition to run, won the election.

The representatives will serve for the duration of the 2023–24 academic year. The next round of elections will take place no later than the fifth week of spring quarter.

“We’re just really excited about the passion and vision these first-year reps have and have a lot of confidence that USG is in good hands this year and moving forward,” USG president Jefferson Lind wrote in an email to The Maroon.

After the elections, Lind and USG executive vice president Ariana Ukaonu met with the newly elected representatives.

“[We] were thrilled to see the passion they shared with us regarding maintaining the Lyft program, as well as some really interesting lanes of advocacy regarding student programming accessibility USG hadn’t pursued in the past,” Lind wrote. “[The] first-year representatives are interested in establishing funding for [house activities] programming through more administrative support.”

Overall candidate numbers and voter turnout for this election cycle were significantly lower than those seen in previous fall CC elections. There were only nine first-year candidates on the ballot compared to 15 the previous year, and just one candidate applied to be on the ballot for the special election for the Class of 2025.

“Overall, this [cycle saw] the lowest student engagement seen in autumn elections for some time,” second-year Nevin Hall, the chair of USG’s Elections and Rules Committee, wrote in an email to The Maroon.

“[We have] some plans in the works on the electoral regulation end to stimulate further interest in USG, including allowing limited political parties and endorsements.”