The Office of Computing Services and the Student Government Election Board ran tests on electronic SG ballots Monday to prepare for tomorrow’s elections — and the ballots seem to have no problems.
The Election Board invited representatives from each ticket to view the testing.
After numerous problems with last fall’s elections, OCS has been testing election ballots for individual students.
Last fall’s election had to be conducted three times because of errors in the voting program. Problems occurred when students voted “no” to referendum no. 43 — the $1 fee increase for the New York Times and Wall Street Journal newspaper initiative. Their votes were not recorded, but “yes” votes were.
Another problem was 179 part-time student were allowed to vote — part-time students are ineligible to vote.
Because all students get a link to a ballot that is specific to their major, OCS must test all majors’ ballots.
Barbara Evans, associate director of Enterprise Solutions in OCS, runs online voting for SG and is the only person in OCS with access to the databases that run the ballots.
Evans said there are five databases running the voting ballots. The databases enable her to know the date, time and Internet provider’s address from which an individual student voted and a tally of votes for each candidate.
Evans said that she cannot view how students voted, but that she can see whether they voted.
At the testing, Evans gave herself a link in her PAWS account to the ballot and changed the election date to enable her to test the voting. She inserted her PAWS identification as different majors to test all types of ballots. She also inserted herself as a part-time student to ensure the computer would not allow part-time students to vote.
Evans said that she will send the ballot link to eligible students’ PAWS accounts today, but students cannot vote until tomorrow.
Evans also checked the ballots to ensure all the candidates names were included and correctly written. She also checked to make sure The Daily Reveille and Tiger TV fee increase referendums were on the ballots.
When students click on the link tomorrow, it will open to their specific ballot. Students can click on the candidates and referendums they want to vote for. The ballot is submitted by pressing the “Submit” button on the page.
Evans said a student can pull up the page numerous times as long as they do not submit the page, which would record that they had voted and lock them out.
Heath Hattaway, presidential candidate representing the “In Focus” ticket, said he was satisfied with the ballot testing.
“Our ticket looks forward to a flawless election with positive outcomes,” he said.
Jessica Stewart, campaign volunteer and representative for the “Making It Happen” ticket, said that she felt the problems with last fall’s election were corrected and will not be repeated.