Student Government’s long-awaited initiative to allow studentsto cast their ballot from any computer got off to a rocky startWednesday.
A computer glitch in the online voting system caused somestudents’ votes not to be counted in SG’s fall elections.
SG Commissioner of Elections Devin Reid said the problemoccurred only when voters attempted to vote “no” on referendum no.43. Instead of receiving a vote confirmation on the screen aftersubmitting their vote, some students’ screens went blank and theirvote was not submitted.
Referendum no. 43 asked students to implement a $1 fee increaseto ensure funding for the Newspaper Initiative, a program thatbrings 530 issues of The New York Times and 325 issues of the WallStreet Journal to students each day.
Reid said he contacted Barbara Evans, who oversaw the electionfor the Office of Computing Services, to inform her of the glitch.Reid said she corrected it by 11 a.m. Wednesday.
But to make sure all votes are counted, Reid said SG willpartially re-run the elections next Wednesday, Nov. 3 from 8 a.m.to 11 a.m. Only students whose vote was not submitted — meaningthe students who saw a blank screen between the hours of 8 a.m. and11 a.m. — can vote again.
Evans, associate director of Enterprise Solutions in the Officeof Computing Services, said the error occurred because of bad dataon a record.
Evans said the computer did not record any votes from studentsthat selected the “against” button on referendum 43.
“This very rarely ever happens,” Evans said. “We’ve been usingthat application since 1998, and I’ve never had any problem likethat before.”
Evans also said she could not have anticipated the problembecause it was not a logical problem, but a physical data error.She said she ran all the tests before the election, but was notable to test the document with the corrupt data.
Reid, a Latin and political science junior, said the votingmalfunction is “uncharted territory” for him, but with the help ofthe election board, SG advisers and Brad Golson and Jenny Byrd, SGPresident and Vice-President, respectively, they decided a partialre-run would be the best way to ensure fairness in theelection.
“We really want to try to get the word out to make the electionas fair as possible and maintain the election’s integrity,” Reidsaid.
Reid said they considered throwing out all of the votes andhaving an entirely new election, but wanted to consider thecandidates’ point of view.
Reid added that the candidate expenditure limits already inplace will stay the same despite the extra voting period.
The election results were supposed to be announced Thursdaynight at 7:30 p.m. on TigerTV. The results now will be announcednext Thursday at 7:30 p.m. on TigerTV.
Dustin “D.C.” Clemons, of the Believe Change Happens ticket andcandidate for a University College Center for Advising andCounseling half-seat, said he thinks the electoral board made thebest decision.
“They have to keep the voters in mind,” Clemons, a politicalscience and mass communication sophomore, said. “It’s about giving[the students] the opportunity to cast their vote.”
Clemons also said they will continue to campaign untilWednesday, but not at the same level.