Those with an eye on University politics may have noticed an uptick in voter turnout in this year’s Undergraduate Student Government election.

Out of the 13,059 undergraduate students who received emails reminding them to vote, 2,234 responded. This is a 17.11 percent response rate, a sharp increase from last year’s roughly 11 percent response rate.

Bryant Miesle, who served this year as USG chief administrator, was the spearhead of USG election promotion.

As chief administrator, Miesle headed up the USG procedure and appeals board, which runs the election every year.

Miesle’s personal goal was getting at least a 15 percent response rate.

Much of what the procedure and appeals board did built on the practices of last year’s chief administrator and current USG Vice President Danielle Parker, Miesle said.

He said Parker was instrumental in “revolutionizing” the voting process.

“I thought she did a great job of kind of revolutionizing the process of voting, because this is only the second year that voting was done online through email,” he said. “I wanted to build upon that further.”

Kasie Durkit, who served as speaker of USG last year, said she was impressed with USG’s usage of social media in spreading awareness of the election.

“If you’re not utilizing that, you’re basically taking the old-fashioned route,” she said.

Much of their efforts, Miesle said, were centered around awareness efforts.

This included making candidates release platform statements to the student body and promotion of the presidential ticket debate.

“First and foremost I wanted to make sure everybody was educated about who they were voting for,” Miesle said.

Durkit and Miesle attributed the increased turnout largely to the fact that this was the first time in two years the race for president and vice president was contested.

Voter turnout the past two years has been “abysmal,” Durkit said.

This low turnout partially gave way to a recurring theme within this year’s USG senate: increasing student awareness of USG itself.

Durkit said a lack of contested elections the previous two years contributed to the lack of student participation.

“If it’s not contested, what are you even voting for,” Durkit said.

While Durkit believed election promotion was largely successful this year, she said certain aspects could still be improved going forward.

Those interested in running for USG must attend information sessions, which she said could have been publicized more.

The lack of those deciding to run, she said, resulted in an overabundance of write-in candidates, which according to her is workable but “not really the democratic process.”

Out of 10 senator at large positions, only seven students were elected, two of which were write-in candidates.

Out of the four diversity senators elected, two were write-ins.

Miesle said that from his perspective, turnout to these informational sessions was good, but improvement could still be made.

“I do agree that we could have promoted [the sessions] earlier,” he said.