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Nearly 11 hours after postponing the Associated Students of Madison online election, the Student Election Commission resolved the situation Wednesday by dividing the ballot into two parts and reopening their vote on separate dates.
If the Department of Information Technology can create and test a new voting module in time, the referendum section of the election would resume today at noon and run until 11:59 p.m. Friday. If DoIT cannot put in place a corrected voting module in time, the referendum portion would resume April 3 at 8 a.m. and conclude 8 p.m. April 4.
Elections for Student Council seats will reopen at 8 a.m. April 5 to 8 p.m. April 7.
Citing a "technical error" in its online database that potentially prevented some students from voting as they intended, the SEC originally postponed the ASM election at 1 p.m. Wednesday afternoon, just one day after the election began.
And as the SEC met Wednesday evening to discuss the situation, representatives were seriously considering throwing out all votes cast — for both the referendums on the ballot and the Student Council seats — and beginning a new election.
However, since DoIT officials said they have not discarded any ballots that were successfully cast and currently have them stored in their database, all previous votes on the two referendums will be counted. Students who already successfully cast votes for the referendums will not be able to vote again on the referendums.
This will not be the case for Student Council seat votes, though.
Since certain Student Council elections were "tainted," because a technical error prevented some students from casting their vote as they intended, all previous Student Council candidate votes will be discarded and all students will be allowed to re-vote for Student Council candidates.
SEC members called the resolution the "best solution possible," given the difficult situation.
"This way, I think, is the way that protects the most people's legal ability to make sure that their vote is counted," SEC Vice Chair Joshua Tyack said. "Those 6,000 students who already voted, their vote will be protected."
With the highly contentious Wisconsin Union and Living Wage referendums on the ballot, the announcement to postpone the ASM online election was made while in the midst of a reported record level of student turnout — an estimated 15 percent of the student body voted on the first day alone.
However, on Tuesday, the day the election began, it became evident to SEC members — which oversees the student-government elections — and DoIT officials — who created the online database used in the election — that some students were potentially prevented from casting their vote.
The error occurred when students attempting to cast votes for multiple write-in candidates for Student Council representative could not complete the process of confirming their ballot, instead receiving an error message on their computer.
DoIT Senior Programming Specialist Brian Rust said both DoIT and ASM tested the voting module that was used, however, an unforeseen error occurred while updating its database between the time the module was approved and when it was opened up to students.
Vested parties expressed differing opinions on SEC's ultimate decision.
"It was really unfair, because there were elections that were not tainted and they could've gotten [those] votes back," Candidate for Student Council Zach Frey said, referring to the votes being discarded for Student Council.
However, Ashok Kumar, a member Student Labor Action Coalition which sponsored the Living Wage Referendum, said "They're leaving … the votes for the referendum in, so in that sense it's good, because they're keeping the votes that are for sure good."
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Frey’s BSing, he has NO WAY to prove candidates were not screwed over.
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Lori Berquam looks a bit freaked out.
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How do they know that the votes for the referendums are still valid if the votes for the candidates aren’t?
This whole process sounds pretty sketchy and because of that, I think whatever the results may be for either referendum or candidate election…. everyone should challenge the SEC’s decision.
Or…just don’t vote because ASM has proved its inability to serve the student voice and meet the student demand for democracy.
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At 9am, I voted with NO write in candidates and then was sent an error message.
At 11am, I voted again with 2 write-in candidates and my vote was confirmed.
What is the guarantee that the Referendums’ votes are valid, if their counterpart on the ballot is invalid?
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I <3 ASM!
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I think it’s important for everyone to remember that this is not ASM’s fault; DoIT messed up the technology. While ASM certainly deserves alot of the criticism it gets, this is an instance where the responsibility lies elsewhere.
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According to DOIT, the only ballot questions open to error were those where write-in’s were a possibility; supposedly the referenda, without a write-in option, wouldn’t have been affected.
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DOIT explicitly stated that the Initiative parts of the ballots WERE NOT TAINTED. That sounds pretty good to me. I think it great that we aren’t completely throwing out 6ooo votes.
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Well, it pretty much highlights how incompetent ASM is—even after winning the Southworth decision in the United States Supreme Court—itself an exercise in state-sponsored totalitarianism.
Maybe somebody can dig up Rehnquist and see if they’ll decide this election too!
Remember: Vote NO on raising student segregated fees $200. Send a message to these bureaucrat boobs that students have had enough of this baloney.
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I assure you that council and/or SJ will be deciding by the end of the year to impeach Tim Leonard and dissolve SEC.
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Is there a reason that no one reported the death threats or the police presence at the meeting? Because for some odd reason SLAC seems to be escaping scrutiny for behavior at the press conference (abhorrent) and their threats and disruption at the last SEC meeting. They were the only people who felt the need to behave in such a belligerent, self-righteous, arrogant, and disrespectful manner. Honestly my heart goes out to them, because they will never understand what they should be informing and working with people, scare tactics and antagonistic speech will get you NOWHERE.
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How about sending a message that students don’t want to lose the institution they spent the last 80 some years building. WUFIP has been student run for a year. We’ve held open forums for that whole year so if you are unclear on any of the actual FACTS, you wish to be ignorant! Memorial Union will have to close its doors in 6 months if it does not update the fire alarm system (the Grandfather clause is no longer something to rely on). —WUD Film Committee Member
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My criticism of ASM is that THE STUDENT BODY WAS NEVER INFORMED OF ANY PROBLEMS! Some people may have continued to try and vote during this period and not have known what the hell was going on. ASM supposedly has the interests of the whole student body in mind - why the hell is it so hard to know what’s going on if so????? THAT is the true measure of ASM’s ineptitude.
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Nice pic of Sree… lol.
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Fact: If raising seg fees for a pretty new Union South and updates to Memorial Union makes anyone unable to pay for their tuition (which is a reality!), then these renovations would not be worth it. Sacrificing someone’s education for the sake of play space is not an option.
VOTE NO.