The Student Government election commission announced Wednesday that the Innovate ticket has won the SG presidential election.
Anna Cate Strong, a political science and screen arts junior, and Gigi Powers, a political science junior, will become LSU’s next student-body president and vice president, pending the verification of the election results.
The results won’t be verified until the pending cases are resolved in the SG judicial branch, which handles alleged violations of the election code. Six penalties disqualify a campaign from the election.
Seven complaints were filed Tuesday with the judicial branch. All three tickets filed cases—and were named as a defendant in at least one other case.
The Inspire ticket, headed by political communications junior Byron Hansley and biological sciences junior Amber Salone, received two penalties in March after the student court ruled the campaign violated the election code by using a video of people without their permission.
The SG election brought in 5,600 votes out of a campus of over 35,000 students. In comparison, the spring 2022 election brought in 7,196 votes, and the 2021 spring election brought in 5,207 votes.
SG uses ranked choice voting, and the Challenge ticket was eliminated in the first round. Some of those voters didn’t rank anyone second for executive office, but those who did had their votes distributed to their next choice.
With the first and second round combined, Innovate captured executive office with 2,856 votes. The Inspire ticket had 2,129 votes.
This was the first SG election with new rules aimed at leveling the playing field for candidates by capping campaign spending at $4,000. It’s also the first where students had two days instead of one to vote.