The University Board of Elections experienced glitches with its online voting system immediately after polls opened yesterday morning, and a Student Council designed opinion poll meant to replace one part of the system also saw problems.
Unity Project Chair Rob Atkinson said the most notable problem involved the Student Council Unity Project referendum, which would have determined next year’s project theme.
“Unfortunately, there was a little bit of confusion over actually putting [the voting options] on the ballot,” he said. “It was supposed to be a choice of four different options, but instead it’s a yes or no option.”
Alisa Abbott, University Board of Elections Chair, said the UBE assumes full responsibility for the problem, adding that it arose because the voting system could not incorporate multiple-choice options for referendums.
“What happened is the way that referendums work on the ballot; there must be yes or no responses — our system can’t recognize multiple choice options,” Abbott said. “It’s totally the UBE’s fault that we didn’t notice the error until now.”
Both Atkinson and Abbott added, however, that Council and the UBE worked cooperatively to redress the problem by directing voters to the Student Council Web site to cast their votes for the Unity Project referendum. The Student Council Web site now has a poll that allows students to choose one of the four options.
Atkinson said he hopes Council’s early identification of the problem minimized any problems voters encountered.
“I think we were able to get a solution up fast enough,” Atkinson said, noting that voting opened at 8 a.m. and the poll on the Student Council Web site was up at 9:10 a.m.
Those who cast their votes before the problem was identified could not vote on the referendum, however, and ITC has no way of identifying those individuals to ascertain that their votes were properly cast because a timestamp is not recorded, Abbott said. Meanwhile, the UBE also cannot remedy the existing problem before polls close Friday, she said.
“We can’t change our voting system right now to accommodate different voting answers but we will change it for next year,” Abbott said. “It’s a really big change and we’re doing whatever we can to get in touch with ITC for next year to fix the problem.”
Although the problem was identified and addressed early yesterday morning, other problems involving the Student Council poll became apparent as the day progressed. Many students were blocked from casting their votes on the Council Web site, Council Chief Technological Officer William Reynolds said. Some students voting on Grounds shared the same internet protocol addresses, making it difficult to track votes, he added. Instead of using IP addresses to monitor votes, Council resorted to an alternate method of using cookies, Reynolds said.
“Now when people go to vote, they shouldn’t be blocked as long as they don’t try to vote more than once,” Reynolds said.
Another problem, meanwhile, that could alter the results of the Student Council poll is that, unlike the UBE-run elections, the results of the Council referendum poll have been available for students to view since it was created yesterday morning.
Despite these issues, Student Council President Matt Schrimper noted that the results of the poll will likely be binding.
“I think that for now, what we’re going to do is use the results of the poll as the binding vote for the Unity Project next year as long as there’s a small margin of error,” Schrimper said, adding that “everyone should be able to vote without any trouble on the Web site.”
As of press time, the limited voting access experienced by many students earlier in the day had been replaced by entirely open access; refreshing the screen allowed for infinitely multiple votes.
Atkinson, though, noted that the founding principles of the Unity Project depend on the results of the poll.
“It’s part of the Unity Project idea,” he said. “One of the things the Unity Project was trying to address was to get student input from the bottom up rather than from the Student Council down. We knew all along that the true fulfillment of the Unity Project would need student input for the theme.”
Council will decide how to assess the referendum results after the polls close, Atkinson said, adding that Council may opt to conduct a separate poll.
“I think we’re definitely going to want to look at the results to see how many votes were actually cast. [We’ll decide on a course of action] depending on how many people actually voted and clicked on the link to vote on the Student Council Web site,” Atkinson said.
Schrimper noted, however, that an additional poll “might not be necessary if one [category] has an overwhelming majority.”
Despite the polling problems, the election probably will not adversely affect the progress of the Unity Project, Atkinson said.
“I don’t think it will affect the Unity Project in terms of delays,” Atkinson said. “We’re going to continue with this year’s theme until the end of the semester. There’s still time to get settled on a new theme.”
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