After three weeks of intense campaigning, the candidates of each Student Government ticket will make one final push for student support as the clock winds down on election day.Election day officially begins today at 7 a.m. and will continue until the polls close at 9:59 p.m. Students will be able to vote for their candidate through the student services link on their PAWS account. Online voting will continue throughout the day.Three separate polling locations manned by the election board are also available across campus.During the day, students can vote outside Patrick F. Taylor Hall from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and inside the Middleton Library lobby from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. A separate polling station will be set up inside the University Student Recreational Complex from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m.The three final selections for how to spend $5,000 of student fees are also included on tomorrow’s ballot.The options include more recycling bins on campus and increased recycling awareness, an online wait list system for Middleton Library that will show which computers are available and more microwaves in dining areas and high-traffic buildings on campus. SG received about 100 student-submitted ideas during the past two months, and a team of five student Senators serving on the Temporary Student Initiatives Committee narrowed it down to the top three. While SG candidates will continue to campaign throughout the day, they will not be allowed to do so within 50 feet of any polling location.This year’s season lasted only three weeks, significantly shorter than past seasons, which have lasted up to five weeks. Commissioner of Elections Jordan Milazzo and the election board set the dates for this year’s election season last November. “We got a lot of complaints from students about how long the campaigning season was,” Milazzo said. “It annoyed students more than it encouraged them to go vote.”SG President Colorado Robertson said the only benefit of having an extra week to campaign last year was a longer opportunity to speak with different student organizations.Each of this year’s presidential candidates agreed the shorter season was beneficial to the students, but some said they would have liked more time to go to student organizations. The election codes specify a 35-day season from the beginning of filing until two days following the announcements of run-off results.The election codes, which define the terms of an election, generally remain the same from year to year, but they can be amended by any student who gets a SG Senator to pen a bill altering the rules. Aside from a shorter campaign season, another major difference between this year and previous elections is the number of candidates running for SG offices.”This is definitely one of the biggest elections in recent memory,” Milazzo said.More than 320 students on five separate tickets filed to participate in this year’s election, a 250 percent increase from the spring of 2008, according to Milazzo.Each of the candidates agreed the campaigns had been handled well, focusing more on the issues than on personal attacks, despite the increased number of personalities.”Our campaigning was a little more heated last year,” Robertson said. “It was a little bit more personal because there were much broader issues at hand.”Though the spending cap for each campaign differed based on the number of candidates on their ticket, most of the parties spent nearly $4,500 in the past three weeks. The exception was the Make it Reign campaign, which ran as an independent party and spent less than $100.—-Contact Adam Duvernay at [email protected]