Computer Glitch Halts Voting in Council Race

A glitch in the computer program recording student votes for the Undergraduate Council election prevented students from voting for about half an hour Wednesday.

According to Stephen E. Weinberg '99, a member of the council's election commission, the voting program was temporarily shut down to correct a bug that one candidate said may jeopardize voting impartiality in the North Yard district.

The voting program is supposed to randomly order candidates' names after a user enters the system. However, an error occurred in this randomizing process.

Weinberg discovered this when he was notified that one of the names of the first-year candidates for the North Yard was consistently listed last.

"One of the candidates was appearing on the bottom of her and her roommate's ballots," said Weinberg.

Weinberg says that as soon as he heard of the problem, he and a member of the Harvard Computer Society "took the system down, changed the code, and re-compiled it."

Although some students said they are concerned the inconsistency may affect the outcome of the election, Weinberg said he hopes that the results will be fair and democratic.

"I'm hoping that the results of the election won't be significantly influenced by the glitch," Weinberg said.

"We tested this thing very thoroughly, but that slipped through," he said.

Elections started Wednesday morning at 12:01 a.m. and will end today at 5:00 p.m.

Andrei H. Cherny '97, who tried logging in to the network during its downtime, said he is concerned that the glitch may affect the election results.

"I just hope that people [weren't] discouraged from voting...If people can't vote for their representatives, then it's not a representative body," said Cherny.

Weinberg noted that the bug has one benefit:

"All of the glitches that we're catching now won't be repeated in the future," he said, noting that elections are proceeding more smoothly than last spring.