Early voting difficulties start senate elections
March 18, 2008
The MSA Senate election is live and running despite an evening of technical problems that required a new electronic ballot to be created.
When ballots were e-mailed to students and voting began at 6 p.m., the Missouri Students Association Board of Elections Commissioners realized the ballots lacked instructions about voting for more than one candidate, though students were able to do so in most colleges and schools. To vote, students needed to hold down a control key while highlighting names.
MSA adviser Farouk Aregbe said the BEC worked with the Division of Information Technology and released a new ballot around 9:15 p.m. that included boxes for checkmarks next to each candidate’s name.
Aregbe said the issue with the first ballot was one of functionality; students could technically vote for more than one candidate, but the concern was that not all students would know how to click for more than one person.
“The first ballot was valid, but people who weren’t ‘control-savvy’ wouldn’t necessarily know (to hold down a control button),” he said.
BEC chairman Geoffrey Grammer said voting had been halted Monday evening, but Aregbe said votes never stopped being tallied before the new ballot went live. Aregbe said halting the election was one of a number of options discussed but never happened.
Aregbe said students who voted before the new ballot was released Monday night would receive an e-mail today telling them to recast their votes so their vote is tallied with the new ballot. Only votes tallied after the new ballot was released will count.
“If you voted early, you get to vote often,” Senate Speaker Jonathan Mays said.
BEC Vice Chairman Ian Krause said paper ballots also would be available from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. today in Brady Commons for students having problems with the electronic ballots.
Mays said he was frustrated that the ballot hadn’t been better tested before it went live and filed legislation Monday around 7 p.m. to address the issue in future elections. The legislation states that the BEC Handbook must be approved by both the Operations Committee and full Senate and include a scheduled “voting application trial,” the results of which would be reported to Division of Information Technology, the MSA adviser and the Senate speaker. Previously, only the Operations Committee was required to approve the BEC Handbook. Mays said because the handbook carries the same weight as other MSA bylaws, requiring it to be approved by full Senate keeps it in line with the process other bylaw revisions must follow.
The bill also includes a provision that the handbook must include the time, date and location of at least three candidate-training sessions. The bill also would require that training sessions be held during “normal Senate time requirements,” such as Tuesday or Wednesday nights, when committees and full Senate usually meet, Mays said. This year’s handbook said candidates would be required to attend mandatory meetings but stated the meetings would be scheduled at a to-be-determined time.
More than 200 students filed online applications to run for Senate, but 129 students’ candidacies were invalidated when they failed to attend a mandatory meeting or file paperwork confirming they understood campaign rules.
Initially, the BEC wanted to eliminate all candidates who failed to attend mandatory meetings, but compromised with Senate and allowed candidates who filed the appropriate paperwork to be included on the ballot. There are 92 names appearing on ballots.
Mays said he was disappointed that so many candidates were eliminated, but happy that Senate met its initial goal outlined in the Senate restructuring report released in January to have all 11 colleges and schools represented in Senate next year. The College of Human Environmental Sciences is the only school that will not have all its seats filled, as only one student qualified to appear on the ballot for one of three available seats.
Voting concludes at 6 p.m. Wednesday.
For a list of the candidates, click here.
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