David Marsh was eliminated during Tuesday’s SBP election

Juniors Houston Summers and Kathryn Walker will compete in a runoff election next week, following an election with the lowest turnout in at least the past ten years.

Summers led the three, receiving 35.6 percent of the votes. Walker received 26.3 percent while David Marsh was kept out of the runoff with 21.2 percent of the vote.

These percentages do not include write-in votes, which constituted 17 percent of the 3,791 total voters.

This total is the lowest voter turnout in more than a decade. The lowest voter turnout in a general election since 2005 had previously been 4,507 votes in 2012.

Writer and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston, who died in 1960, got 403 write-in votes.

Activists want Hurston to replace William Saunders as the prominent campus building’s namesake. Hurston received 10.6 percent of total votes.

Other names included in the write-in votes tally were Left Shark, Dean Smith and Hillary Clinton.

Marsh said he will endorse a candidate but was not yet ready to make an announcement.

“Obviously I’m disappointed with the results, but I really have no regrets about the campaign we ran,” he said. “We ran a great campaign — a clean campaign. We won y’all’s endorsement, and there’s not one particular thing I wish we could change.”

After hearing the news that she would continue in the election, Walker said she was grateful for the students’ support.

“I feel incredibly humbled to have the students support to get this far, to have the people behind me who believe in my platform to say ‘we like what you’re doing. We think you’re going to help us, so we’re voting for you,’” Walker said.

In the moments after results were announced, Summers said he and Walker decided they would take a few days off from campaigning and resume Friday.

“I’m excited, I am — it’s one step closer to being student body president, and that’s the ultimate goal,” Summers said.

Summers said that over the next week, he wants to convince the Hurston write-in voters that he will listen to them in office.

“I think it’s a powerful statement, I really do. I think it’s something that makes a statement more so about student government than any particular student group on campus,” Summers said after the results were released. “I think it represents the fact that student government hasn’t stood as a voice for, you know, those particular individuals that wrote in ‘Hurston’ on the ballot.”

Walker said she wanted to talk directly to the students that chose to write-in votes and explain how she wants to help.

“What I would like to say to these students is I appreciate you standing up for your beliefs, and I hope that in the next few days that we can talk and I’m here listening, trying to understand what is you want, what it is you need,” Walker said.

Brandon Linz was elected president of the Graduate and Professional Student Federation and Ian Ebert was elected Carolina Athletic Association president during Tuesday’s election.

The race for Residence Hall Association President will be a runoff between incumbent Taylor Bates and Grayson Berger.

The duo Ying Lin and Brent McKnight will compete in a runoff against Cat Leipold and Max Williams for 2016 senior class officers.

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