Results for three seats on the Graduate Student Council (GSC) are still pending in an election that saw a nearly 30 percent decrease in voter turnout. 1,047 graduate students voted in this spring’s ASSU election, down from last year’s 1,477.

Due to a twelve-way tie in the medicine district, a seven-way tie in the education district and a two-way tie in the natural science district, the names of the students who will be filling these spots have yet to be announced. The top vote-getters in the medicine and education district each received one vote, while both of the candidates still in the running for the natural science seat received two votes.

ASSU elections commissioner Adam Adler ’13 said he plans contact each of the two candidates running for the natural science district to ask which one wants the position. He added that he will also meet with the current GSC to decide on a policy to employ for the remaining ties.

“There is no fixed policy,” said Nikhil Rajendra, assistant elections commissioner for graduate students. “We must meet with the current GSC to settle on one policy to use.”

Until a policy regarding ties had been applied, the elections commission will not tell the current GSC the names of the candidates still in the running for contested districts.

Despite the overall decrease in voter turnout, Rajendra pointed out that the three districts with the highest votes had a significant improvement in voter turnout when compared with last year.

Current GSC member Sjoerd de Ridder, who was re-elected as a council member for the earth science district, won the most at-large votes overall with 227, followed closely by fellow incumbent Anne-Laure Cuvilliez with 219 at-large votes. Ridder and Cuvilliez were elected last year with 332 and 410 votes, respectively.

“I’m honored to receive so much popular support, but I’m disappointed that the voter turnout was lower than last year,” Ridder said.

Ridder added that for GSC elections, campaigning is not as prominent as seen at the undergraduate level because “it’s much less politics.”

He attributed the low graduate student turnout to lack of advertising.

“We don’t really campaign all that much,” Ridder said. “We mostly just write a strong statement on the website, and we try to advertise the elections among grad students.”

“I think maybe we did not advertise as strongly as previous years,” he added, “but it is hard to reach graduate students.”

Rajendra said that he also sees very minimal campaigning done for the GSC election.

“I’ve seen students maybe just hand out a few flyers and maybe emailing their friends, but the campaigning is still minimal,” Rajendra said.

This year, the graduate ballot included a survey question asking students to agree or disagree on a spectrum with the following statement: “I have a healthy advisor-advisee relationship, and I feel well-mentored, encouraged, motivated and intellectually supported by my primary academic and/or research advisor.”

“Strongly agree” or “agree some of the time” received the highest responses, with 266 and 279 votes respectively. Only 79 students said they “strongly disagree.”

Other incoming council members include Tiffany Abdullahi, elected to the business district seat; Ateeq Suria, elected to the second engineering district seat; Adrienne Johnson, elected to the humanities seat; Roshan Shankar, elected to the social science seat; and Camille Fletcher, a write-in candidate who has accepted her position as a council member for the law school district.

David Hsu, Nipun Sarin, Hrishi Goel, Puja Deverakonda and Saad Bhamla will also serve on the GSC based on at-large votes.