E-mail system glitch stalled junior class election ballots

A switch to new voting system created a few problems in the last student government elections.

Some members of the junior class were inadvertently left off the e-mail listserv ASSU used to send out ballots.

While most races were uncontested or had wide margins of victory, the race for executive vice president was separated by just 62 votes out of a total of 1,039.

Current ASSU transfer representative and junior Matthew Mauer lost to opponent Kaylee Venosky, a sophomore, by a 6 percent margin.

Mauer feels that the voting glitch, which delayed ballots getting to members of the class of 2011, could have made a serious difference in the election results.

"It was over six hours that the junior class did not have ballots in their e-mail," he said. He also feels like the issue is cause for a new election.

The election committee was not aware of the error until hours into the voting period, though they managed to fix the problem before the three-day voting period ended.

The process of e-mailing ballots directly to students is new.

In previous years, ASSU used software from a provider called Student Voice. However, they partnered with another company for this year's spring elections.

"Student Voice told us last summer that they were no longer going to be able to do elections for anyone, not just us, for anyone across the country," said Renata Opoczynski, ASSU faculty adviser.

Opoczynski talked to other Jesuit schools such as Creighton University and Gonzaga University in seeking a new system. She found that most have their voting software maintained by campus information technology services. Several of the schools recommended Votenet as a dependable alternative.

Seattle U's Office of Information Technology did not recommend any voting service in particular; Votenet was chosen as ASSU's new ballot service.

"We switched to a new software system this year which was not our ideal situation of how we would like to do ballots," Opoczynski said.

In this new system, the ASSU election committee must manually mail out ballots to voters. The committee uses listservs to aid in mailing the ballots. A glitch in the junior class listserv resulted in the system error, which led to an undefined number of juniors receiving their ballots late.

"Coincidentally, right before our elections we had asked OIT to update permissions to our listserv," Opoczynski said. "We had asked OIT to update those permissions to ensure that only the people who should have access to it have access to it."

OIT officials were unavailable for comment.

Mauer is not asking for a re-election because he might not be here next year to assume the ASSU position. He is a Coast Guard Reserve and may be deployed by fall quarter.

"If I knew for a fact that I would be here next fall I would ask for a new election," Mauer said.

Opoczynski said the glitch did not have a significant impact on the election results.

"I don't think it made that much of a difference," she said. "I checked the percentages compared to others, and they were pretty spot on compared to other years."

As of now, ASSU is not planning to hold a recount or a second election.

Dillon may be reached at dgilbert@su-spectator.com