Colleges to vote again for senators
The BEC invalidated results in four of 11 schools and colleges.
Published April 1, 2008
Following a week featuring a thrown-out ballot, an impromptu paper ballot for some students, a Senate speaker who refused to accept the results of the election and a petition filed with the Student Court, the MSA Senate election is not quite over.
The Missouri Students Association Board of Elections Commissioners decided late March 20 to invalidate election results in four of MU’s 11 schools and colleges because a statistical analysis showed the ballot problems could have affected the close elections. The new elections are tentatively scheduled to begin Monday.
BEC chairman Geoff Grammer said a combination of factors forced the BEC to decide to hold new elections in the College of Business, College of Arts and Science, College of Engineering and School of Journalism.
A new ballot had to be created three hours after the election began because the first ballot sent out March 17 did not include instructions about how to vote for more than one candidate.
More than 700 students who cast the first ballots needed to re-vote because the results with the first ballot were thrown out.
About 200 students did not re-vote.
Also, an unknown number of students were unable to vote because of a technical glitch with the electronic ballots.
When some students attempted to sign in to use the electronic ballot, they receive a message that they were “not eligible to vote in any active election.”
Division of Information Technology Director Terry Robb said in a previous Maneater report that DoIT programmers are still investigating the glitch.
Grammer said the BEC could not have foreseen the glitch and doesn’t think it will happen again in the future.
“It’s an issue that we didn’t foresee because it only affects a certain percentage of students, and there’s no way we would have known it would have happened,” he said. “Even with a mock election, I don’t think we would have caught it. It was hit-and-miss who it affected. The computer glitch should be fixed by this time next year.”
Grammer said the new elections will not utilize DoIT’s electronic ballot; rather, students in the four colleges will receive an e-mail through each college’s listserv that instructs them to e-mail the BEC with their selections.
Grammer said he e-mailed the deans from each school. The College of Arts and Science and College of Business have agreed to the election and Grammer said he’s waiting to hear back from the School of Journalism and College of Engineering.
If the deans allow the BEC to use the schools’ listservs, the new election would begin on Monday and last for 48 hours as MSA bylaws require.
MSA Senate Speaker Jonathan Mays said Grammer and the other members of the BEC will present their plan to the Senate Operations Committee at 8 p.m. tonight.
Mays, MSA President Jim Kelley and 33 other student leaders filed a petition with the Student Court on March 20 asking the court to investigate the election.
Mays said he met later that day with the BEC executive board and the board agreed to invalidate results from the four schools and hold new elections.
Mays said once the BEC agreed to do so, he e-mailed Student Court Chief Justice Drew Weber and stated he would no longer pursue the petition.
“The premise for the investigation was that the BEC would not acknowledge the impact of the IT problems on the election results and consider re-doing the elections,” Mays said. “As soon as the premise changed, I e-mailed Drew. There are no outstanding issues with the BEC now. The real problem, then and now, is with (DoIT).”
Weber said the court would not officially investigate the election, though the court will discuss the election at its next meeting and provide the BEC and Senate with recommendations for next year’s election.
Grammer said the new elections are the best solution given the issues that arose with the ballots.
“We wish that the malfunction hadn’t happened, but this is the best alternative that we have to deal with that,” he said.
