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Instead of finding out the presidential and vice presidential winners in two days, the University of Maine student government hopes to know in half the time.
After last year’s malfunction with online voting, members of student government have teamed up with the Information Technologies staff to solidify all chances of having an errorless election.
“This year, our Fair Election Practices Committee chair is Jesse Wertheim, and he is outstanding because he is doing a lot of work ahead of time,” said student body President Kate O’Brien. “He has showed us timelines to make us sure the proper steps have been taken leading up to the election.”
Outside of serving as FEPC chairman, Wertheim works for IT, which, according to O’Brien, has been beneficial in constructing a strong relationship between the two parties.
During last year’s election, O’Brien and current presidential candidate Brigham McNaughton won the presidency and vice presidency, respectively. However, their victory did not come without controversy. Because there were problems with the system, this allowed Eli Young, who ran against O’Brien, to file an appeal after losing by 61 votes. Once things were cleared up, the duo was sworn into office in late January, more than a month after the original elections.
Since that time, student government has gone through numerous FEPC chairpersons before they settled on Wertheim, who was appointed in the middle of October. Before the Tuesday election, the FirstClass e-mail system will be tested to make sure there are no problems.
“For one thing, we have a definite chair in place, which is something that delayed the results a lot last year,” McNaughton said. “Also, it has been made very clear that FEPC has a supervisor in the vice president of student organizations, and I felt last year the position did not have the answers to certain questions and that link to the VPSO has been made much more solid, which will help for a smoother election.”
During the test phase, a ballot box will appear on some student’s FirstClass desktops. However, they will not be able to access it. During that time, testers will check to make sure things are in place.
“The golden rule is something can always go wrong,” Wertheim said. “In this situation, I am aware of how things do go wrong to the point where I can fix them. So if there are any problems that do pop up, we can take care of them.”
Although Wertheim believes it would take something catastrophic to ruin the elections, he has a plan in the event that they do. When looking back at last year’s elections, Wertheim thought students were rushed back into voting instead of being given time to become more informed.
In case something like this happens again, he said that he will give students a time frame to look over the candidates again in the hopes of making more people aware.
“I think last year was a higher voter turnout, and I think it is because of what happened, and if that had not happened, I do not think a large turnout would not have happened,” O’Brien said. “Bad press is press, and it did make people more aware.
“I would hate to see something like that happen again, but if it results in more people voting, it is not necessarily a bad thing.”
Bangor Daily News