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Shake it like a Polaroid picture Western Harlem Shake video goes viral. >> pg. 3
thegazette Re-voting since 1906
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
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canada’s only Daily Student Newspaper • founded 1906
Due to elections changes, there will be no Gazette tomorrow. We will resume printing Friday, February 15. Volume 106, Issue 73
USC election goes off with a glitch Aaron Zaltzman News Editor Well, at least it’s not a hack this time. However, in what’s becoming a familiar occurrence, the University Students’ Council election was disrupted when voters looking to cast their ballots in this year’s election reported a multitude of problems. Reports of the issues, most regarding who voters were and were not able to vote for, began trickling in soon after voting opened at midnight on Tuesday. The balloting was shut down soon after and recommenced Tuesday at noon. “Shortly after voting opened, the USC began to receive messages regarding affiliate students being able to vote in science elections, senator-at-large candidates not showing up on the ballot, and we called our IT manager and chief returning officer to determine what was happening,” Jeremy Santucci, vice-president communications for the USC, explained. “At 12:44 a.m. we decided to close the ballots in the interest of fairness to the candidates who were affected by the problems with the ballot.” While the bugs were reminiscent of last year’s hack, Santucci said the problem this time was purely internal. However, he stated the issues had been fixed before voting reopened.
Adam Fearnall, USC president, summed up the technical issues as a case of broken telephone between the ballot information and sorting program. “The problem was in the program that translates the list we get from the registrar’s office into categories to assign to voters,” Fearnall said. “Something about the two didn’t talk together properly.” Though not as destructive as last year’s hacking, the issues are concerning to those involved in the election, particularly after Western’s Information and Technology Services assured their program was secure and ready for the vote. Fearnall explained the fundamental problem was in the transfer of voting information between Western and the USC. “We rely on Western for their data—we don’t have access to students’ emails or logins,” Fearnall said, explaining how the USC uses Western’s voting program for their elections. “The process just isn’t very strong, and somewhere in the process of getting the list and putting it into the system, something got garbled.” The USC first began introducing online voting into their elections in 1997. However, between hacking and technical issues, it may be time to review the procedure, according to Santucci.
“We’ve identified the system as being flawed [...] and we’re going to be taking a serious look at the voting system in general, and how we can improve it to prevent any debacles such as this,” Santucci said. “Once the elections are over, we’re committing to exploring everything available to us and making sure the election system is as tight as possible.” “It wouldn’t be a bad thing for us to look at it to see if we can make some upgrades. I think there’s probably a better system of relaying the information that we can work out,” Fearnall said. “It’s frustrating for candidates, for me, for the USC and it’s a big deal.”
The presidential candidates, however frustrated, remained in high spirits as voting reopened. Vivek Prabhu said his team was soldiering on through the disruption. “We’ve been through it before, so it’s a similar kind of emotion,” Prabhu said. “I think the most important thing is to make sure you’re motivated and confident, and that people still have a reason to vote.” Ashley McGuire said her team was keeping up their energy, but expressed some worry about those who had already voted. “I’m hoping they send an email out, and that they promote it. I
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hope people realize that they have to revote,” McGuire said. However, she added her “team is looking forward to the next three days, they’re really excited for it.” Pat Whelan said his team was still just as focused and excited as before the problems. “Mistakes happen, but I don’t think this is going to affect voting at all. It’ll be kind of a bizarre victory party at noon, but other than that I don’t think very much has changed,” Whelan said. “Our energy is back up for sure, and we’re just continuing to get people to use our tools and let them know voting is back on.”
Western Momentum loses, gains demerits Alex Carmona News Editor
Naira Ahmed Gazette
University Students’ Council presidential candidate Vivek Prabhu and the rest of Western Momentum saw their demerit point count fluctuate yesterday, after a successful appeal and new infraction reduced and then added points to the slate’s tally. Prabhu was assigned eight demerit points for pre-campaigning last week after the elections committee noticed his YouTube video was posted over two hours before the soft start time of 11 p.m. However, according to both USC President Adam Fearnall and Prabhu himself, the video was meant to be posted privately until 11, as is standard practice, and only remained public for a short amount of time. “We were charged the full demerit point value because the claim was that we released our
video early. The thing is, we originally made it private, but then it was unlocked briefly so I could see it on YouTube, and then it was locked again,” Prabhu said. Western Momentum appealed the elections committee’s decision, and, according to Fearnall, their pre-campaigning infraction was reduced from eight demerit points to four. “By the letter of the bylaw they did break the rule, and then we looked into the severity of the penalty,” Fearnall explained. “We asked ourselves ‘Did they receive an unfair advantage? Did the early posting of the video influence votes?’ We didn’t think there was any influence of voters as a result of the video being posted early, and we looked at whether they left the video public for the whole time, or if they had made it private and we were confident they had gone from public to private very quickly, so there wasn’t
a lot of opportunity for other people to see the video early. We largely agreed with the decision [to assign demerit points], but we felt that we could reduce the penalty to half the points due to the lack of influence.” Prabhu almost made up for the reduction in demerit points, however, after being assigned another three points yesterday for the distribution of food in the University Community Centre without the permission of Pashv Shah, chief returning officer. “We held a small pizza partytype canvas for volunteers, not for voters or potential voters. There was a miscommunication as to the actual permission of us being able to do that because it was public space, even though it was a private meeting—I didn’t think I had to ask permission for that, because the pizza wasn’t given out to the public. I wasn’t looking to take advantage of anything,” Prabhu concluded.