After going through two elections in the fall, the Student Association’s new online voting system will face its biggest test year in the executive council elections Tuesday.
Starting with last fall’s senate and Homecoming elections, students began voting through a link on the OnCampus portal instead of the old system in which students voted in Colvard Student Union or Mitchell Memorial Library. The new system, which takes away the poll experience but makes voting more accessible to students, has made a significant impact in voter turnout according to data provided by Elections Commissioner Walt Montgomery.
Voter turnout more than doubled for the 2010 Homecoming elections compared to 2009 and nearly doubled for the SA Senate elections. SA President Thomas Sellers said the turnout for Homecoming elections was close to the largest seen in any SA election.
“We had to do something so more people could vote,” Sellers said. “Ideally, we would have gone out and bought 30 more laptops [for poll voting], but I don’t think that would have been the best way to spend that money.”
With a new voting system comes new rules and challenges, but Montgomery said there have been no major issues with the online system designed by ITS. Both Montgomery and Sellers said they worried the new system would be blamed when the announcement for the Homecoming results was delayed.
The delay was caused by a possible violation they did not have enough time to investigate before the scheduled announcement that night, Sellers said. The next day, the allegation was investigated — a routine occurrence on election days — and it was determined not to have violated the integrity of the election.
“This is a fool-proof system,” Montgomery said. “I can’t imagine any way to get around it. I think it’s a great thing because the integrity of the system is impossible to break.”
Sellers said during the day of an election, SA officials can see how many votes are cast throughout the day, as well as monitor which wireless hotspots on campus the votes are coming from. An abnormal number of votes coming from one wireless hotspot would raise a concern that a candidate has established a polling location, which violates campaign rules.
The absence of polling locations may shift the strategy of the candidates running for office. Previously, the SA constitution prohibited campaigning within 25 feet of a polling location, so most candidates set up as close as they could to the two polling locations.
Because all of the people voting had to go to those two locations, there was less incentive to spread the campaigning throughout campus. Rhett Hobart, who is running for SA president in this month’s elections, said his strategy will be different on Election Day.
“In the past, you only had 3,000 students voting, so you’re campaigning just to the students walking by on the Drill Field,” Hobart said. “I think now your whole scope of the election is spread out. Any student that enrolls at MSU one hour or more on this campus can vote. It really does change the entire campaigning process.”
SA has also passed new campaign rules, which are posted on the SA’s website, which went into effect last fall. The main difference is if a violation is discovered, the candidate’s campaign budget will be reduced by 10 percent, regardless of what position he or she is running for.
The campaign budget for an executive council candidate is $1,000, and all costs associated with the campaign must be verified by receipts. Sellers said the student body president at the University of Florida (which is now the only SEC school not conducting student government elections online) spent over $40,000 on her campaign. He said he believes keeping the spending in check gives more people the opportunity to run for executive offices.
“I never want it to appear that you have to be wealthy to run for SA president, or that you have to be in a large organization that will fund it,” Sellers said. “One thousand dollars is not cheap, but you can get it.”
There are over 10 pages of the SA constitution dedicated to the election process. The constitution also makes the candidate responsible for any violation committed by his or her team.
As more rules come into play and the voting system continues to evolve, Sellers said he hopes the spirit of the elections remain the same.
“It’s fun to see people campaigning on the Drill Field, fun to see people wearing shirts,” Sellers said. “It’s a fun time, so we don’t want to hinder that, but at the same time we want to control it and make it as positive as possible.”