Stokes received 52.5 percent of the vote over freshman Natalie Russell, who garnered 40 percent. There were also 16 write-in votes, said Emily Margolis, Board of Elections chairwoman.
"It feels great to win," said Stokes, a journalism major. "I really wanted to be involved in student government."
Margolis said District 17, which includes Craige and Ehringhaus residence halls and Odum Village, was the only election pushed back because of a computer "fluke." The other five districts up for election were decided last Wednesday.
Despite Student Congress officials' concern about the possibility of low voter turnout, a total of 160 people voted on Tuesday -- the largest voter turnout for any districts involved in last week's special election. "We had very active candidates, so I figured we would have (a good turnout)," Margolis said.
Speaker of Student Congress Mark Townsend was not as optimistic about the level of participation before the election. "There is usually low voter turnout because a lot of people don't know about us and what we do," he said.
Stokes said the election's delay probably hurt his campaign, even though it gave him more time to hand out fliers at Ehringhaus Residence Hall, where he lives, to inform students about the new election date.
"It was a lot more work having to go back and redo what we had already done," Stokes said.
Margolis said problems in one of the three Student Central servers caused errors for students logging on to vote between 7 a.m and noon in all races last Wednesday. Margolis posted a notice on Student Central announcing the postponement of the District 17 special election at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday.
She said the early notice of the postponement helped make Tuesday's turnout strong.
