In a special meeting, Student Senate invalidated the results of last week’s election of Student Body President, Vice President, and Vice President for Finance, and called for a new election to be held on April 20 and 21. The election will be for the three executive positions from the previous election, as well as for all Senators.
Senator Nicholas Scocozzo sat as Chair for the evening as Vito Fiore, Senate Chair, had previously endorsed a candidate and relinquished the position for the night. The discussion quickly began as Scocozzo received a motion to validate the election results.
In total, 2,144 students cast their vote in the election, setting a new record for voter turnout.
Steven Kling, a member of the Internal Development committee, read a report from the committee written on Saturday that urged a vote against validating the election results on the grounds that several election rules had been violated because of the technical problems encountered by the Elections Board.
Initially, the election site allowed graduate students to vote for undergraduate Senatorial candidates. Also, on the first day of voting, Computing Services removed the elections server from the campus network because of a potential security concern relating to another Unix machine on campus. According to Senator Ed Ryan, Computing Services had noticed warning signs of potential hacking in the week before the elections, and the sudden increase in traffic to the machine had caused an automatic security measure to remove the computer from the network.
The committee reported that the polling locations were available for at most only 36 hours, not the 48 hours originally announced to the campus community. Additionally, the Elections Board reopened polls after the server was reconnected, but did not inform the entire student body through an official e-mail. Finally, the report said that by adding an additional day to the elections, the board effectively changed the date of the election and violated election rules.
Senators Scocozzo, Kling, and Tim Bowen abstained from voting on the report in committee.
In a prior interview with The Carnegie Pulse, Christopher Watkins, the elections chair, said the board was advised by John Hannon, director of student activities and advisor to the election board, not to send an official e-mail, and had instead opted to e-mail student organization leaders to spread the word.
Robert Reeder, president of the graduate student assembly (GSA), said that GSA did not have an opinion between Kristina Wiltsee and Erik Michaels-Ober, the two candidates who received the most votes in last week’s election. He did say, though, that he was concerned that given the errors, the legitimacy of the President would come into question.
“GSA doesn’t take a position, but urges consideration for a course of action that will give the most legitimacy to the winner,” he said.
Senator Megan Flocken added that she knew of many students who were not able to vote because the elections server had been unavailable.
Kling commented that the student body was given election results that they assumed were correct, and questioned whether the vote was because the election was closed or because of the technical problems.
“We have an election that has been publicized as completed. The appearance to the campus community is that the election is finished,” he said.
Bowen asked whether there was precedent for invalidating results because of technical problems. Fiore responded that to his knowledge, there has not been such a large outage in the past.
“All candidates operated under the same conditions. It won’t do much good to draw this out,” said Bowen of the election.
There was some question of how students could vote while the server was not online. Watkins said students could vote through a ‘double enveloping’ procedure in which a student’s vote is placed inside two sealed envelopes. He said this was used for one vote, and five students used a paper ballot while the elections server was down.
Alik Widge, vice president of GSA, said that there were a number of graduate students whose votes weren’t counted and called for invalidation of the results. He said that though campus organizations were e-mailed, many graduate students live off campus and had e-mailed him when they were unable to vote. He also said the double enveloping method was not publicized.
Elizabeth Buckser, a sophomore drama student, raised concern about whether she had voted twice, or whether her first vote had been invalidated. Senator Jonathan Mendelson asked the elections chair to confirm whether this could have happened. Later, it was confirmed that the number of votes cast matched the number of Andrew IDs that had logged into the system.
Student Body President Daniel Gilman tried to redirect discussion to student representation.
“The question is less about rules, it is whether people could vote who wanted to,” he said.
Bowen said, “We’ll get less students who vote. The most important thing is that we get the most number of voices heard.”
Yanna Weisberg supported invalidation, saying that while there was speculation that fewer people would vote in another election, there was a possibility that turnout could be higher.
“Were everyone’s voices heard? Not all voices were heard,” she said.
Mendelson added that the small difference in votes between candidates Wiltsee, Michaels-Ober, and Pock should be taken into account because of the number of people who said they were not able to vote.
Hannon proposed retaining the votes and allowing an additional day of voting where only new votes could be cast. This idea was quickly negated when Fiore said that process would create two groups of votes, with one set being more informed than the other.
Fiore said, “The best option is to invalidate.”
Senator Nicolette Louissaint again tried to focus discussion on whether the student body had been well represented in the election.
“There were people who wanted to vote that couldn’t. The only choice we have is to not validate,” said Senator Matt Rado.
The motion to validate the election results was put to a vote and defeated by a vote of 5 yays to 19 nays, with seven abstentions, including all of the candidates for executive offices.
After the votes were invalidated, Senate moved to reschedule the election of executive officers and Senators.
Senator Michelle Birchak motioned to suspend rules relating to the timing of elections so the votes could be cast before the end of the semester. Election Rules require Senate to decide on a day two weeks before the election and announce them at least 30 days in advance.
The motion was quickly passed, and Fiore motioned for elections to be held on Tuesday, April 20 and Wednesday, April 21. After much discussion of whether this was too close to Carnival, or on the best days of the week, Senate approved the dates.
Watkins assured Senate that a mock election would be run on the elections server and that steps had been taken to ensure that the server was not susceptible to security concerns. He also said that Computing Services would be made aware of the upcoming election.
In its final order of business, Senate voted down a motion by Senator Jay Pujara to recommend that the Election Board not publish the results of the new election until after they are validated by Senate at its meeting April 22, the day after elections end.
As the meeting was called to a close, candidate Bowen announced that he would not continue running in the race, and voiced his support of Kristina Wiltsee and Hussein Al Baya.
Wiltsee said she hopes people will again vote next week. She said she knew of between 100 and 200 students who were unable to vote, and that she expects those who voted before to vote again.
“Senate handled the issue better than I expected,” she said.
When asked whether he felt the move to invalidate the election was motivated by allegiances within Senate, Bowen responded, “Allegiances aren’t the case.... In all honesty, Senate is very concerned with rules.”
Michaels-Ober said he would continue campaigning and hopes to win the election.
Presidential candidate Jason Pock is not a member of Senate and was not present at the meeting.
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