Technical and judicial complications encountered by the Student Association election highlighted the 51st session's meeting Monday night. Online polls opened at midnight Monday via MySlice with a programming glitch that was fixed within 20 minutes.
"Everyone who wasn't able to vote can just try again and it will work," said SA Director of Technology Mike Fleishman. "So everything is working perfect. We've got everything ironed out." 
Within the first seven hours of voting, 161 students voted using an incomplete ballot that did not include the Constitutional referendum.
"We know the exact time frame," Fleishman said. "We know whose Net IDs logged in to MySlice, so we can send them all e-mails, and the ITS people are making an application - it might be a special link, we're not sure yet - so these people are given the option to vote 'yes' or 'no' on a referendum."
They will not be able to change their vote for president, comptroller or assembly members, he said. Abstentions will be counted for those who do not use the special application.
SA's first-ever online voting application was developed by Larry Roux, information technology analyst, and Erik Anderson, director of information systems. Both attended the meeting to demonstrate the process of MySlice voting. Election results will be available immediately after the polls' closure Thursday at midnight, accompanied by statistics outlining the total number of votes per candidate, school and hour, Roux said.
"To a certain extent, we designed the interface," Anderson said. "Some of it is dictated by PeopleSoft, who are now owned by Oracle. We can design the look, the feel, somewhat of the pages, but some of it is also part of the language."
Votes given for official candidates will be delivered as an exact sum, whereas write-in votes will not be sorted through. Alec Sim, director of Board of Election and Membership, will be responsible for tallying those votes.
SA's Judicial Review Board (JRB) deliberated Sunday to determine what will be considered a vote for write-in presidential candidate Larry Seivert. Competing candidate Marlene Goldenberg and Jessica Oster, her campaign director, brought the issue to the JRB.
The following entries will be counted as a write-in vote for Larry Seivert: Lary, Larry, Lawrence, Laurence, Larry Seivert and Larry Sievert.
"That's taking into account basically every part of human error that has to do with Larry's name," said JRB Chair Adam Jones. "This decision only applies to this election. In all future elections, a write-in vote will be deemed adequate if it is clear to the election officials who the votes intend to vote for."
Future write-in votes must include at least the first name and last name's initial to be credited to that candidate, he said.
Jones independently ruled on this case, but will be joined in future deliberation by newly elected JRB member Kaitlyn Eberle. The sophomore business major was elected to the JRB Monday night.
"(Eberle and I) had a fun little debate over our own interpretations of different parts of the rules earlier," Jones said. "And she actually won."
Be the first to comment on this article!