University of Wisconsin students will have the chance to go online and participate in the democratic process during the student government’s fall elections, which will run from Monday morning until Wednesday afternoon this week.

The polls for the Associated Students of Madison elections open online at 8 a.m. Monday morning and close at 5 p.m. on Wednesday.

Students will be voting to fill nine spots on the Student Council, two spots on the Student Services Finance Committee and two referendums to change ASM’s constitution.

The open council spots include four freshmen seats, two graduate student seats, one school of education, one school of engineering and one special student seat.

Student Council Chair Brandon Williams said he would like to see students come out and vote because all of the seats being filled are important, with the Student Council being the representatives for the student body and SSFC handling a lot of the money ASM distributes.

Last spring ASM recorded a record with 34.5 percent of the student body voting in the elections.

Student Election Commission Chair Renata Danks said she did not expect to duplicate those numbers again this fall because they are only targeting certain members for this election.

She said only freshmen can vote for the freshmen representative, and only graduate students can vote for the graduate spots on the council. The same goes for the other seats, except for the SSFC seats, which everyone can vote for.

Danks added fall elections in general have lower turnout then the ones in the spring, but she still encourages everyone to vote.

Williams said he would optimistically like to have a 15 percent turnout for the election.

He added the elections are especially important for freshmen and the representatives they will elect.

“These freshmen get involved early, and then they have four years ahead of them still, so you are really recruiting the next generation of ASM,” Williams said.

There has already been some controversy surrounding the two open SSFC seats after two of the committee’s members resigned too late for candidates to be placed on the ballot.

The Student Judiciary ruled the seats would have to be filled by write-in candidates during the election because no candidates’ names will be on the ballot.

SSFC Chair Matt Manes had wanted the positions to be filled by the Nominations Board, however he said they will move forward with whoever is elected.

Manes said they will begin training for their budget season on Thursday, and he expects whoever is elected to be at the trainings.

“As far as budgets, it won’t be a problem, and in terms of all the other supplemental information [on SSFC] they will have to crack down on the information over the weekend,” Manes said.

Danks said they are not anticipating any problems with the write-in candidates, but said it will be different from anything she has seen in the past.

“It will be interesting to see if anyone ran a successful enough write in campaign to win,” Danks said.

Danks said the election results will be released at a press conference at 8 p.m. on Wednesday.