The referendum portion of the Associated Students of Madison election is on schedule to resume Monday, Student Election Commission Chair Tim Leonard said Sunday.
According to Leonard, the new online voting system has gone through extensive testing by both ASM and the Department of Information Technology and is ready to go today as voting for the two referendums on the ballot is set to reopen at 8 a.m.
"Everything is working according to plan," Leonard said. "We're all set."
A technical error in the online voting system forced the election commission to suspend the elections last week amid a record level of student participation.
However, because DoIT officials assured the election commission that the technical error only affected the portion of the election for Student Council seats, the commission decided to split the election into two parts — one for the Student Council seats and one for the referendums — and save student votes successfully cast for the referendums while discarding all votes for Student Council seats.
As a result of that decision, two Student Council candidates, Zach Frey and Sree Atluru, filed a motion with the ASM Student Judiciary, calling for a review of the SEC's ruling.
The Student Judiciary affirmed the election commission's decision Sunday.
"There is not one right or wrong answer to constitutional questions [or] issues such as this one," Student Judiciary Vice Chief Justice Amber Hodgson said in an e-mail to The Badger Herald. "The court believes that the SEC's decision is constitutional and therefore isn't going to overturn it."
Students who have not yet voted on the contentious Wisconsin Union and living-wage referendums will have until 8 p.m. Tuesday to cast a ballot.
Elections for Student Council seats will resume at 8 a.m. Wednesday and will continue until 8 p.m. Friday.
When the ASM elections first opened last week, an estimated 15 percent of the University of Wisconsin student body cast a ballot on the first day.
Leonard said he hopes to experience the same level of student participation when elections reopen today.
"I'm hoping students are more aware of the election and will participate," Leonard said. "It's hard to advertise and get students to care about it."
