At the end of the tallying of the votes for the Associated Students race, it was announced that current President Adam Salgado and Director of Finance Adam Haverstock will face each other in a runoff on Tuesday and Wednesday to determine who will be president for the 2007-2008 school year.

In a campus of nearly 34,000 students, only 1,847 voted.

Haverstock and his Students First slate received the most votes, with a total of 560. It was a close race for second between Salgado’s 111 You Decide Again, which received 433 votes, and Dina Cervantes’ Vote for P.E.D.R.O. slate, which received 420 votes. Miguel Segura and the Make A Connection slate received 348 votes.

Haverstock, who was already campaigning for the runoff election by Thursday, said, “I wasn’t surprised by the results. I put in more effort than the other candidates on the campaign days.”

Haverstock said he would continue to work just as hard as he had been during the primary elections, but he wouldn’t share specifics of his strategy for the runoff.

Salgado said the turnout was better than that of last year’s election.

“I’m confident that whoever the students will choose, that they will have a great administration next year and they won’t let down the constituents of the student body,” he said.

Part of Salgado’s plan to increase the number of votes for him includes being out on the streets more, talking to classes, clubs and organizations, and getting his supporters out on the streets.

Both candidates in the runoff responded confidently about their positions and the possible results of the runoff election.

Cervantes and the Vote for P.E.D.R.O. slate lost the second runoff spot by 13 votes, but she said that she understood there was a possibility of a three-way tie.

“I feel good about the loss,” she said. “We had a lot of support from students.”

In terms of the time to turn in the paperwork and organize for a presidential campaign, Cervantes said that she had not planned to run until late in the game.

Citing student apathy as the primary reason for a low voter turnout, Cervantes said that since she had been aware of the elections in past years, she had not seen a higher turnout for an election.

In light of this week’s runoff election, Cervantes’ slate has decided which candidate to support: “We’ve decided to support Adam Haverstock and Students First. We think students are ready for a change.”

Segura expressed initial shock at the voting results, but then attributed his slate coming into last place to a lack of funding.

“We never had money, so we didn’t make fliers,” he said. “We didn’t get out there as much.”

Segura will also be supporting Haverstock in the runoff election this week.

When asked about low voter turnout, he said, “It’s kind of sad that our students don’t care still. They don’t connect to this campus as much as they could.”

Director of Elections Leonard Wong said that the runoff would be similar to the first elections, but on a smaller scale. He said that in the runoff election, it is more important for the candidates to get the people out to vote.

Wong lamented that he had three street teams aimed at encouraging students to vote. Most students, however, would ignore them or throw their fliers in the trash as soon as they received them.

Wong felt that the low voter turnout was possibly a result of a larger issue within government.

“I think that when people are unhappy with government, it trickles down to any government,” he said. “You can see some of that in how people vote.”