{"id":312,"date":"2011-04-14T14:51:26","date_gmt":"2011-04-14T14:51:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/jsuflash\/?p=312"},"modified":"2011-04-14T14:51:26","modified_gmt":"2011-04-14T14:51:26","slug":"online-voting-issues-plague-sga-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/theflash\/index.php\/2011\/04\/14\/online-voting-issues-plague-sga-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"Online voting issues plague SGA elections"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Students on the Gibbs-Green Walkway campaigning.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tiffany Edmondson<\/strong>
\nStaff Writer<\/strong><\/p>\n

Many students and candidates, especially members of the freshman class, are walking around campus wondering why some of them couldn\u2019t vote for their class candidates during the 2011-2012 Student Government Association and Class Council Elections.<\/p>\n

From the moment the online polls opened, word spread quickly around campus that the online voting system was experiencing problems.\u00a0 A glitch in the system prevented some students from voting for their proper class officer candidates or Miss JSU.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was messed up,\u201d said one freshman student when asked how she felt about the overall online voting process.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s already hard being a freshman because we are new here but there are some things at JSU that should be easy, especially when it comes to voting,\u201d said psychology major Ariel Kinsey from Jackson, Miss.<\/p>\n

Kinsey said things like this make the school look bad and if freshmen give bad reports, it will make students want to transfer or not come to JSU at all.<\/p>\n

According to Gary Crosby, Director of the Center for Student Leadership and Involvement in the Office of Student Life, students logged onto the online system and the wrong class candidates appeared on the screen for them to vote on. The online voting system that JSU used is administered by eballot of VoteNet.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce we became aware of the problem, we worked to solve it in regards to the students that called. We are all about being fair and transparent,\u201d said Crosby. \u201cThis election was conducted just as if it was a local or national election.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some students did submit complaints to the election commission just as the policy states in the student handbook. The commission had to respond to the complaints within 24 hours of the submission.<\/p>\n

Flyers about voting options were also posted in the residence halls, JSU social networking sites and on the university website\u2019s home page informing students about voting options.<\/p>\n

Once students realized that they couldn\u2019t vote, they were to call Edwin Quinn, Student Life Executive Director or\u00a0 sign a list located in his office on the 2nd floor of the New Student Center.<\/p>\n

Office staff then confirmed the student\u2019s class status by double-checking it on Banner, the system that administrators use for student information.<\/p>\n

Since this was the first time this type of problem arose with student elections, Crosby said that they manually put students into the computer system so that they were able to vote. He added that \u00a0the university takes its responsibility to address student concerns seriously which is why the election commission decided to extend the voting hours.<\/p>\n

On Friday, April 8th, students had from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. to vote by paper ballot as stipulated in the Student Election Regulations handbook under Section II, letter G.\u00a0 Students originally had 24 hours on April 6 to vote electronically.<\/p>\n

Crosby stated that 280 votes were received including the votes that were already received online to determine the final winners.<\/p>\n

Even though solutions were provided to the problems that occurred, some students have mixed feelings about the overall election process.<\/p>\n

Now that the online and paper ballots have been counted and the winners have been announced, the question to why the ballots appeared the way there were hasn\u2019t been answered as of yet.<\/p>\n

Alfred Jackson, JSU Registrar, said that the classification information that appeared on the ballots did not come from his office.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just learned about this situation when you walked in but no one has submitted any request to this office for that type of information from the students,\u201d said Jackson.<\/p>\n

Jackson added that however the information was obtained, it should have been tested before students were allowed to vote.<\/p>\n

Jocelyn Cotten, a junior accounting major from Madison, Miss., said, \u201cI think the results would have been the same because the people who wanted to support the candidates still did even after the voting system messed up. I think the best people still won.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnny Edwards, a senior entrepreneurship major from Greenwood Miss., disagreed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel that everybody had a chance to reconsider their votes. The results can never be the same and most people didn\u2019t vote both times,\u201d said Edwards.<\/p>\n

Charles Smith senior mass communications major from Leland, Miss.,\u00a0 also felt that the results of the election were not accurate.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that all the votes did not get through. They should have shut the system down in advance to ensure accuracy. With the voting malfunctions the results would have been closer.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tiffany Edmondson Staff Writer Many students and candidates, especially members of the freshman class, are walking around campus wondering why some of them couldn\u2019t vote for their class candidates during the 2011-2012 Student Government Association and Class Council Elections. From the moment the online polls opened, word spread quickly around campus that the online voting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-312","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-campus-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/theflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/theflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/theflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/theflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/theflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/theflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/theflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/theflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/theflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}