The Class of 2010 voted Thursday in a run-off election between two tickets competing for the class council and elected freshman Grant Schmidt to be the next sophomore class president.
The Schmidt-Lakusta-Kyrouac-Huang ticket won 576 - or 56.3 percent - of the electorate's votes. Its competing ticket, Mathews-Adsit-McDonald-Rose, fell short with 385 votes, or 37.6 percent of the votes. The remaining six percent of the voters abstained.
Judicial Council president Liz Kozlow was pleased with voter turnout among the freshman class, which was "comparable to the primary [election]."
Approximately 1,024 freshmen voted Thursday in the run-off, while 1,053 participated in the original election.
Schmidt, who won 44.6 percent of votes in the first round of the elections, said he planned his involvement in Notre Dame's student government while he was still in high school.
"Before coming to Notre Dame, there were several areas that I really looked at - spiritual, academic, tradition, athletics," he said. "My [high school] counselor and I talked about the extracurricular activities I wanted to participate in - student government was one of them."
In order to give his classmates what they want from a class president, Schmidt said he plans to collect more feedback from his constituents and improve student involvement in the council's decision-making processes.
"Everyone here was a leader in high school," Schmidt said. "It's important to me to not make every single decision alone as president, but to make decisions together with the rest of the council and the class."
Schmidt also said he and his cabinet were developing an application and a system to better involve any students interested in formal council participation.
"The first thing we have to get going is getting people involved," he said. "There's formal ways of doing it. We're excited to get more specific feedback."
Schmidt thanked his peers for participating in the election and said he believes "it is an honor to represent all the people here at Notre Dame from such diverse backgrounds."
