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Election results still unknown

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Also by Joanna Pliner:

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Judiciary revokes SAE's status at university (April 6, 2006)
ASM weighs in on Halloween (September 4, 2006)
FH King to receive funding, after all (September 19, 2006)
UW says website causing 'ruckus' (October 9, 2006)

by Joanna Pliner

Monday, October 23, 2006

Even in a paper ballot election, technological glitches still kept the University of Wisconsin Associated Students of Madison from promptly releasing the results of the Student Council elections.

According to ASM, 2,635 UW students — about 6.5 percent of the student population — voted on the Living Wage referendum, Student Union Initiative and various vacant ASM seats via Scantron last Wednesday and Thursday.

ASM Student Election Commission Chair Leah Moe said the Scantron system was supposed to expedite the voting process, but had the opposite effect.

In ASM elections, voters have the option to allocate more than one vote per candidate, and the way this was displayed on the Scantron sheet confused some students.

In previous years' elections, if students had the option to cast three votes to a candidate, they could either check three boxes, or just check the last one. Several students used the same logic in the Scantron elections, prompting technical problems when the computer was unable to register the votes properly. Since Scantron is typically used for testing purposes, the computer could not read more than one bubble per line, forcing the SEC to count the votes manually.

The SEC staff was out of town this weekend, according to Moe, so they counted votes all day from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday.

"We thought the instructions were clear, but when it came out there were a number of votes the computer invalidated," Moe said. "We didn't feel it would be fair to throw out all those votes that were legitimate."

SEC is still waiting on absentee votes from UW students studying abroad — of which there were fewer than 12 — that should be in today, Moe said.

The results of the election are scheduled to be announced tonight, pending the ASM Student Judiciary review of the results. According to Moe, if the judiciary does not find any discrepancies such as "missing votes" or "electoral irregularities," the votes will be certified and the results will be announced.

Although Ashok Kumar of the Student Labor Action Coalition — a group that supports the Living Wage referendum — and Shayna Hetzel of the Student Union Initiative have often butted heads on their respective platforms, they both said they prefer accuracy to promptness when it comes to elections. This mentality, they said, is especially relevant since the first two rounds of referendum elections were voided last semester due to technical difficulties.

"Last year there was a lot of … commotion that developed after the votes were thrown out," Kumar said. "I don't think it's that big of a problem to take their time and make sure the voter turnout is accurate."

While ASM did a good job monitoring the security and fairness of the elections, Hetzel said, she would have liked more communication between ASM and the students during the tabulation period.

"Unfortunately, through the last week that I've been in contact with them, it's been up in the air," Hetzel said. "At least we are going to have a paper trail this year, if for any reason something goes awry."

UW freshman and ASM Student Council candidate Andrew Carpenter said he would like to know the results of the election, but unfortunately, many UW students frankly do not care.

Carpenter added that he expected a Scantron system to speed up the tabulation process, but that was not the case.

"It doesn't make much sense [that] we don't have the votes," Carpenter said. "Or we don't know why we don't have the votes."

Moe said once SJ certifies the election results, there is a five-day "appeal window" for anybody to appeal the results. Though Moe admitted the tabulation process has taken more time than is ideal, she said ASM has done their best to make sure all votes are accounted for.

"I know candidates never like to be kept in suspense," Moe said. "But this way we know the results are thorough and fair."

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Anonymous (October 23, 2006 @ 2:27am):

Hey freshmen candidates, stop whining:
you have NO IDEA what it was like last year to run for ASM.
THREE ELECTIONS, just think about that one.

Anonymous (October 23, 2006 @ 12:40pm):

Pulling the old Al Gore move, don't like the initial result, so raise questions about the ballot and recount it 5 different ways until you win.

Let's take a hint from UWM and just get rid of these guys.

Anonymous (October 23, 2006 @ 2:40pm):

Everyone should be thanking ASM for taking their time to make sure the final count is correct. They don't need another election debacle as a result of trying to rush the process.

Anonymous (October 23, 2006 @ 3:32pm):

Pathetic!

I hereby challenge the results of the union initiative if it didn't come out the way I wanted -- my opponents must have cheated! And you can't prove otherwise!

Isn't that how we got stuck voting on it again?