With record-setting voter turnouts of 62 percent in the primary and 57 percent in the final election, Georgetown’s class of 2005 elected Thursday its four representatives to the GUSA assembly Thursday.

The freshman class elected Nazareth Haysbert (COL ’05) with 616 votes, Luis Torres (COL ’05) with 423 votes, Philip Beer (SFS ’05) with 370 votes and Sean Fern (SFS ’05) with 322 votes.

A total of 853 votes were cast among the eight candidates who participated in Thursday’s final election after having been the top vote-getters in Tuesday’s primary, in which 17 candidates competed.

The elected freshmen expressed great enthusiasm for the upcoming year. “[I’m] very honored – everybody here is very talented. The easy part is getting in; the hard part is making a difference,” Torres said.

Election organizers credit the high voter turnout and relatively smooth voting process to the online voting system made possible by the Saxa Server Project. “[The election has] run fairly smoothly. There’ve only been a few quirks,” said Meg Kinnard (SFS ’02), member of the senior class committee and election commission.

Candidates had few complaints about the stringent election rules and procedure. “The rules are effective to keep [the election] fair,” Beer said. “The only problem is that the candidate statement E-mail was received after the [primary] ballot.”

Part of the election process involved the candidates’ participation in a debate in Sellinger Lounge Wednesday night.

Much of the debate centered on issues of importance to Georgetown’s female population, a topic that resulted from the lack of female representation among the candidates. Only two of the initial 17 candidates were female.

The debate was not filmed by GUTV and broadcast live and throughout the day on Thursday, as GUSA had hoped.

According to GUSA Election Commissioner Eric Rivers (COL ’02), GUTV could not show the debate live because the station shows its regular live programming on Wednesday nights.

Rivers said GUTV could not film the debate for broadcast on Thursday because all cameras were unavailable. Rivers is a member of THE HOYA’s editorial board.