Voter turnout up 46.2 percent from last year’s USG election


Undergraduate Student Government voter turnout increased by 46.2 percent from last year’s election, totaling 5,411 votes, according to numbers announced at the USG Senate meeting Tuesday night.

According to the USC USG Elections Facebook page, over 1,000 votes were cast in the first nine hours and 4,500 votes were cast by the beginning of the last day of voting on Feb. 9. Students voted both online and in-person at various on-campus locations.

The voter turnout by the beginning of Thursday already had superseded the 3,700 votes that were cast in the 2016 USG election.

Voter turnout in 2016 dropped by 39 percent when compared to the 6,027 votes cast in the 2015 USG election.

Voting in the 2017 election took place from Feb. 7 to Feb. 9. Students received free food as an incentive for voting.

Kat Lee, the associate director of elections for USG, said that this increased turnout was due at least in part to intentional efforts made by USG to get people to cast ballots.

“From the beginning, our goal was to increase voter turnout from last year, so we’re very excited that we were able to keep that and make people engaged from all over the student body,” Lee said. “I think a lot of that came from the diverse people running. We had a lot of people who were new to USG, and that definitely made people more engaged.”

The Austin Dunn and Morgan Monahan ticket garnered 43.2 percent of the votes, while Rachel Udabe and Rebecca Harbeck acquired 28.9 percent of the votes and Daniel Million and Timothy Vorhoff received 27.9 percent of the votes.