Even after a rocky campaign riddled with roadblocks, Students Unite presidential candidate Darren Beckham snagged the win in the Student Government Association election.

Beckham defeated SURV (Shockers Uniting Reality & Vision) candidate Sean Mclemore by 95 votes, with a total of 502 votes (55 percent) to Mclemore’s 407 votes (45 percent), out of 909 votes cast. Despite the setbacks of campaigning, Beckham said that he was “really happy with the results.”

“I’m glad it worked out in the end, and I’m really ready to move on,” Beckham said.

Six Students Unite party members were disqualified in the first week of campaigning. Beckham was later suspended from campaigning for a full week leading up to voting.

Fourteen of the 24 elected positions are now held by members of Beckham’s party, leaving nine for Mclemore’s SURV party. This also leaves the health professions Senate seat open, which will be filled by the next administration, along with the freshman seat.

Beckham and his running mate, Brianna Kitchings, said the victory is not about political party competition.

“I think it’s about working with everyone on the Senate this next year and not about old alliances,” Beckham said.

Kitchings concurred. “I think this is a great group of people,” she said

Although a lot of work lies ahead for Beckham and the newly elected SGA Senate, Beckham and Kitchings agreed that their first order of business will be filling the sleep deficit the election created.

“[I’ll] take a weekend off,” Beckham said. “That hasn’t happened in … the semester.”

After getting some rest, Beckham said that he will thank his supporters and be “building those relationships” with the new senate members to prepare for the next SGA session.

The new SGA administration chooses the chairmen and directors. The student advocate and treasurer positions will soon be appointed by the current administration.

“Usually that process becomes a lot easier when we know who the president and vice president are going to be, just because you don’t know who is going to fit best with a mystery administration,” Beckham said. “Now we know, so hopefully that means good things.”

Chief Election Commissioner Olivia Sullivan felt that the election went well, despite the many actions the Election Commission was forced to take during the process.

“I think it was smooth,” Sullivan said. “Of course there were the large infractions we had to deal with, but it’s nothing that we as a Commission couldn’t handle. Compared to some of the past elections, this went very smoothly.”

Sullivan said she believes violations are inevitable in any election. As long as the results are accurate and the SGA can continue, she said that she is satisfied.

Despite Sullivan’s perspective, former Election Commission member Tessie Arambula, who resigned from the Commission last Wednesday, two days before the election results were announced, had a different opinion.

“I just didn’t want to associate the work that I had done [as SGA Treasurer] up to this point with the decisions of the Commission when I didn’t generally agree with a lot of what I saw,” Arambula said.

Arambula said an inevitable bias exists within the Election Commission because of its members close association with those they are required to monitor.

She cited various inconsistencies, including one party being allowed to have a non-party head speak to the Election Commission, while the other party was not allowed. One party, Students Unite, was also punished for speaking at an SGA funded event. Both parties spoke at the SGA funded event Visant on April 13, and neither was reprimanded.

“I just saw the entire situation as being one severe internal conflict of interest,” Arambula said.

Sullivan admitted the party has ties with most of the Election Commission, but she thinks that Arambula was not used to election politics.

“I’ve been involved in SGA for years, and I know the way the Journal (a document of SGA rules)works,” Sullivan said. “All the work that she does is so far withdrawn from the politics of SGA.”

The journal is describes SGA rules elected officials and candidates are required follow.

In past elections, conflicts of interest have been even more probable. Last year’s Election Commission included a sibling of one of the presidential candidates.

Arambula said she believes that more third-party members should be part of the Commission to provide more clarity to issues and less bias.

This year, regardless of possible bias within the Election Commission, there are clear winners: Beckham and Students Unite.

Beckham and Kitchings thanked the opposing party for making the election a competition of ideas and said they would like to work with them in the future.