Last year’s ASUW elections produced a turnout of 28 candidates seeking to fill the eight elected positions on the ASUW board of directors. There were two full tickets, two partial tickets and several independents. Five students were vying for president alone.

This year, however, six of 10 candidates are running unopposed. The only two positions with more than one candidate are president and director of diversity efforts.

At the elections fair held yesterday on the HUB lawn, each of those 10 candidates got the chance to speak briefly to the student body, detailing their platform and the reasons they deserve students’ votes. While such action may seem unnecessary for the candidates who are running unopposed, they maintain that they have campaigned just as seriously as they would have if there had been competition.

“I’m still out there as much as possible, trying to connect with people and build support,” said junior Jason Padvorac, the only candidate running for director of faculty, administration and academic affairs. “Right now we’re working for a connection [with the students] and to get a legitimate voter turnout, and that’s always a challenge.”

Padvorac emphasized that increasing voter turnout has become a central part of his campaigning process. He wants to ensure that the student body cares about what the candidates stand for.

“It makes us work harder so that we’re legitimate,” he said. “Fewer people vote if there are uncontested positions; it just means that we have to work harder to get the support.”

Junior Madeleine McKenna, who is running unopposed for vice president, agreed that it’s still important that students vote.

“If you’re the only candidate running, you could win with like 50 votes, but that’s not really a legitimate election — that’s not a mandate from the students that they want you in that position,” she said. “We really want the votes so we can have that legitimacy.”

McKenna said that the fact that so many positions are unopposed isn’t widely known outside of ASUW, and she tries to keep it that way.

“Most students, we go and talk to them as if we were candidates running against other candidates,” she said. “We don’t tell them that we’re running unopposed because we think that would create a lot of apathy.”

As far as the reason why so few students turned out to campaign this year, junior Shauna Stadnik, chair of the Elections Administration Committee (EAC), said that it simply comes with the territory.

“Some years there’s a lot of people, and other years there’s none,” she said. “For example, if a student was thinking about running this year, and was there last year and saw 30 people, maybe they got overwhelmed.”

She mentioned that the lack of turnout may be due in part to the fact that last year was a national election year, which encouraged students to become involved and excited about campaigning.

“After the election, maybe some people just waned out on their civic participation,” she said.

Still, though, the candidates view the race as whole in a positive light.

“So far it’s been really rewarding — the places we go, people really respect what we’re standing for,” Padvorac said. “I think we’ll be able to work through this.”

ASUW elections take place online May 11-13. For more information, visit vote.asuw.org.

Reach reporter Molly Rosbach at news@dailyuw.com.