Bugs, Mistakes Delay Council Elections

Several computer glitches and human errors disabled the Undergraduate Council voting system during last week's elections.

"I'm convinced that council voting is permanently cursed," quipped Paul A. Gusmarino '02, the council's technology coordinator.

Election Commission officers failed to include the name of one first-year council candidate on the ballot, bugs plagued the online voting program in Eliot House and the election was delayed by incomplete data on first-year voters.

The council is currently holding a re-election for the East Yard district that began yesterday at12:01 a.m. and will conclude tomorrow at midnight.

Only hours after the election began early Wednesday morning, Jonah G. Westerman '03, a first-year candidate in the East Yard, had notified the council that his name was not on the ballot.

Elections Commission chair Kyle D. Hawkins '02, who is also a Crimson editor, said that at that point the council had two options.

"We could have stopped the election and then have started it over again, or we could have waited until the election's completion and then rerun just the East Yard's vote," he said.

The council selected the latter option, as its members believed it would be the least disruptive course of action, according to Hawkins.

Other first-years running for election in the East Yard concurred.

"It was the only fair thing to do," said candidate Jared S. Morgenstern '03, a resident of Greenough Hall, "although I'm sure it's going to have a great effect on [voter turnout]."

Hawkins apologized for the oversight. "It's really not this candidate's fault. It's our fault and we're sorry."

The council pledged to help East Yard candidates publicize the new vote.

Yet Anna K. Engstrom '03, a candidate from Wigglesworth Hall, complained that all the old posters had already been taken down and that the council had not contacted her, or to her knowledge, any of the other candidates, with an offer of assistance.

Incomplete data on first-year voters forced the council to put the online voting program on hold for the first few hours of the election period.

From midnight to about 4 a.m., council members scrambled to enter first-year dormitory assignments into the listings provided by the registrar's office.

Without this information, the online voting program was unable to sort votes by district.

Only a couple of hours earlier, council members had discovered that the registrar's data did not include this crucial information.

The election was originally scheduled to begin at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday and conclude at midnight on midnight on Friday, but the council extended the election by a few hours to account for the time lost as members filled in the missing information for first-years.

The problems facing council elections were compounded by glitches in the online voting program for Eliot House.

Eliot House residents found that they could only vote through the program by hitting "Return" instead of entering their birthdates and ID numbers. Some found that they couldn't vote at all.

Michael J. Epstein '00, an Eliot House resident, said that he was one of those who was turned down by the system.

Hawkins said that those who wrote the council detailing their voting problems were allowed to vote by e-mail.

Epstein, however, said he feels the e-mailed ballot option was insufficient.

"In any case, an election in which you cannot vote by following the directions calls for an immediate cancellation of the results, no matter what," he said.

Elected council member Todd E. Plants '01 of Eliot House said he agreed.

"I think the situation was very poorly handled," Plants opined. "The result is inaccurate and I would support it being retaken. We have to really take a look at how we do voting as a whole."

Despite the problems, the council reported that the results showed an average voter turnout from Eliot House. The percentage of Eliot House residents voting in the election was comparable to returns in other Houses.

For now, election results have been released for all districts, excluding the East Yard. The new East Yard election began yesterday at 12:01 a.m. and will conclude Tuesday night at 11:59 p.m.

This year's election glitches are only the latest in a series of difficulties that have troubled the council in the past few years.

In February of this year, the council was forced to resort to paper balloting during special elections to fill vacant seats in 11 districts.

The confusion during general elections for house representatives last December was even greater. The computer program failed completely and the Council was forced to nullify the results and reschedule voting for a week later.

According to Hawkins, the council's goal is to rewrite the computer voting program and to convert it to a Web-based model.

However, Kamil E. Redmond '00, a resident of Pforzheimer House and vice president of the council, cautioned that the problems are rooted in financial limitations.

"We really don't have funds in the budget to fix this," she said.

So despite the much-touted $40,000 budget surplus last year, the bugs in the council's computer system may continue to bug voters.