Council's Online Voting Program Fails Before Elections

Perhaps the Undergraduate Council should consider spending its $40,000 surplus on a new voting system.

Council officials announced that special elections to fill vacant seats on the Undergraduate Council will be held by paper balloting due to computer problems. The council's custom voting program, "uc-vote," has had problems since the general elections in September.

The special elections are being held to fill seats in eleven districts: Adams, Currier, Kirkland, Leverett, Lowell, Mather, Pforzheimer, Quincy, Winthrop and the East and South districts of the Yard.

Balloting will take place in dining halls today and tomorrow.

The possibility of paper balloting was brought up at last Sunday's council meeting.

"As you know, uc-vote is really problematic right now," said council Vice President Kamil E. Redmond '00 at the meeting.

"The problem isn't so much with uc-vote, but with the computer [the program uses]," said Paul A. Gusmorino '02, the council's technology coordinator.

"Right now the problem we're having is really with the power supply. If you turn it off, you can't turn it back on again," he said.

The failure is the latest in a long line of problems with the program, which the council purchased from the Harvard Computer Society for more than $2000 in 1995.

The computer program failed during general elections for House representatives earlier this year, forcing the council to nullify the results and reschedule a second round of elections a week later.

Another glitch caused problems last year when transfer students and some others were temporarily prevented from voting. In 1995, election results were delayed for 16 hours and a temporary crash prevented some students from voting.