Act Now’s Francis Torres re-elected St. James campus director by 21 votes 

In a recount on Thursday, Act Now’s Francis Torres was confirmed as the winner of the St. James campus director race in the Student Association elections.

Torres won with 333 votes—just 21 more than challenger Calvin Bartholomew Soto from the Values, Voices, Virtue slate (V3) who had 312 votes.

“I’ll be honest, it was definitely a sigh of relief,” Torres told The Dialog.

Torres said that the close race challenged him to step outside his comfort zone and campaign harder but that he enjoyed the challenge.

The election results were a split between the Act Now and V3 slates and Torres said that he sees one of the incoming board’s tasks as bridging the gap between the former members of the two slates.

“I think it’s a great opportunity, I think hearing their campaign points and seeing what they wanted to do on their posters was great,” said Torres “At the end of the day the underlying cause for why we all ran was to support students and be the voice for students.”

Twelve ballots were rejected by elections staff and 237 ballots were unmarked for the St. James campus director election.

In total 894 ballots were cast or  8 per cent of the eligible voters at St. James campus, the highest voter turnout of the election.