By-election garners more student interest
By Scott McManus
Lance Writer
October 31, 2007
 Despite running into a few minor glitches, the UWSA’s first on-line by-election was a success having received double the votes from previous ballot elections.
The UWSA hopes this new system of voting will not only encourage a higher voter turnout, but will save time and money that can be used in other areas of the election.
“It was a successful run through,” explained Justin Teeuwen, chief returning officer of the UWSA. “Now it’s up to council to approve it.”
Although the election is over the results still need to be confirmed by council to ensure the election was run fairly and accurately. That decision won’t be final until Thursday’s meeting. “It was a natural progression for voting,” Teeuwen continued. “We’ve been talking about it for four or five years now.”
Overall the by-election ran well, but it was not without complications. While the UWSA had paper ballots on hand for those who had trouble electronically voting, Teeuwen explained that there were only eight reported instances of students who couldn’t vote.
Richard Dumala, IT Services specialist, helped run the election and explained that in rare circumstances students were seen as ineligible to vote because the system was recognizing them as only part-time students. “It went off better than I expected,” Dumala said. “But I tend to be pessimistic.”
Another minor snag came Thursday afternoon when the system shut down for an hour due to a suspected memory leak. The memory leak was caused when the servers were not letting go of memory and the system became full.
A simple restart of the system allowed the polls to stay open the rest of the day.
Teeuwen wasn’t happy with the glitch but explained that since the polls are open all day and night for the three days of voting, that it’s not as critical as the old system where every hour the polls are open is crucial.
In fact, more voting hours was probably just one reason why there were 927 votes cast, double from previous elections.
“I saw posters around campus, and figured I had no reason not to vote,” said fourth-year student, Jill Kuenzie. “I never voted before, but I thought if I could do it from home anytime I wanted to, I would give on-line voting a try,” she said.
Teeuwen hopes the money saved from ballot voting will go towards marketing the elections and letting people know when and where they can participate in school politics.
“Instead of spending money on paper, we saved several thousand dollars,” he commented.
The new system also saves time in many areas.
Besides the obvious hand counting of ballots, every ballot cast had to be crossed-referenced to ensure the voter was eligible to vote.
With on-line voting, the voter immediately receives a message of their ineligibility directly after they login.
The data collected electronically can also be used to record and analyze the characteristics of voters more easily, such as their major and whether they vote in every election.
Although voter choices remain anonymous, the UWSA is able to track some key demographics useful for future elections.
“I’m able to see how many science students voted, or when the polls were the busiest,” Teeuwen said.
Both the UWSA and IT Services were satisfied with how the on-line election ran, but it will still be up to council to see if an on-line election will be appropriate for the spring 2008 general election.
|
