Amid rainbow-colored fire and exploding balloons, this year’s final six Homecoming royalty candidates were announced on Thursday evening during Eberhard Zwergel’s annual Halloween show at the Technological Institute.

The final three Homecoming king candidates are Weinberg senior Samir Mayekar, Communication senior Antony Merkel and Weinberg senior Ben Woo.

Communication senior Kate Doehring, Weinberg senior Amika Porwal and Weinberg senior Jenny Tison were selected as the final Homecoming queen nominees.

Students voted from Tuesday through Thursday at a booth in Norris, selecting from among 12 candidates.

More than 700 people voted this year, said Homecoming co-chairman Jay Schumacher, a Communication junior.

The six final candidates will ride on a float during tonight’s Homecoming parade.

Homecoming king and queen will be announced Saturday at halftime during Northwestern’s football game at Ryan Field.

About 1,000 people had voted for the royalty court in past years, according to Jessica Lowe, a Communication junior and Homecoming 2005 Royalty co-chairwoman. She said fewer people voted this year because they could not do so online.

“We had a major problem getting the Web site up after the ASG site was down for so long,” Lowe said. “Because we didn’t have the capability to use NetIDs with the new site, we couldn’t have voting online. Otherwise, we couldn’t stop people from voting more than once.”

The royalty court announcement came about midway into the Halloween show in front of a crowd of about 300 students. Zwergel, a senior lab demonstrator for the chemistry department, wowed the audience with chemical wizardry for more than an hour.

Tricks are adapted from his demonstrations to chemistry classes.

– Nitesh Srivastava