Voters encounter ballot access problem 
March 4, 2010 by Sean Jaramillo
Students with last names beginning with S – Z could not use online ballots
Nearly one-fourth of the UNLV student body ran into a problem with their online voting ballots for the CSUN Executive Board elections.
Students whose last names begin with the letters S through Z were unable to access the ballots, which became noticed by CSUN officials at about 9:45 a.m. Tuesday, according to Vincent Lipari, CSUN elections director.
“What happened was that the voter list file was corrupted when it was being uploaded,” Lipari said. “I’m not sure exactly what happened because when I checked the list initially, it had A to Z, but the last part didn’t go through for some reason.”
CSUN put a notice of the issue on their Web site and let students know that they could contact Lipari to set up a time to cast their votes.
This issue did not go unnoticed by students, as their attempts to vote were met with a roadblock, as the voting Web site told them that there were no elections listed.
“Two students to my knowledge raised their concerns about not being able to vote,” said Student Body President Adam Cronis.
Students wanting to vote in the elections did have another option in the form of paper ballots. Lipari said that the situation should be resolved by tomorrow and students will be able to vote both online and via the paper ballots.
“It gives me some solace in that there is a backup option,” Cronis said, “and I think some of [the problems with the voting system] will be mitigated by the paper ballots.”
Lipari noted that CSUN is in the process of getting the problems with the system resolved.
“We are working with the company who does the ballots and hope that everything is functional by the time everything starts tomorrow,” he said.
As to how the situation affects the elections, Nevada Student Affairs Director and Student Body Vice Presidential candidate David Rapoport said that the problem “is a minor inconvenience [and] it’s really hard to gauge at the moment.”
Many colleges are now using Internet voting for elections, and Internet voting is being pushed by a small set of cronies for the USA as a whole. In this election, the Internet voting system blocked the subset of voters whose names begin with letters s-z, from voting.
Unfortunately, the public does not have a good understanding of the risks posed by database structures. People might think, “well sure, but it would be noticed if everyone with names s-z was omitted.” But subsets can be created using any criteria for any field in a database. In a high stakes local or federal election, the omitted voters could be “women age 75 and up”, or “people who voted Democrat in the last election” or “people who live in houses that would be affected by a proposed land annexation.”
Obstruction through accident — or accidentally on purpose — has the effect of reducing the number of votes cast from that subset. While many voters will assert themselves or persevere using alternate methods, some will not. And the alternate methods carry risks of their own. What security procedures were in place with the alternate paper ballots, and was the public able to observe?
The best voting systems are simple. Internet voting is the worst option of all for a country that claims to be a democracy, because almost all essential steps in elections are concealed from the public using Internet voting.
Many different “reforms” that are dangerous to democracy are being ushered in using the popular justification of making it more “convenient” for people to vote. But this alleged convenience comes at great cost to the infrastructure of our democratic system. Essentially, to have a democratic system the people must be sovereign over their government; they achieve sovereignty though public elections, the key word being “PUBLIC” — and when any key step of the election is concealed from the public, the election ceases to be public, and the democratic structure itself is altered.
Many colleges are now using Internet voting for elections, and Internet voting is being pushed by a small set of cronies for the USA as a whole. In this election, the Internet voting system blocked the subset of voters whose names begin with letters s-z, from voting.
Unfortunately, the public does not have a good understanding of the risks posed by database structures. People might think, “well sure, but it would be noticed if everyone with names s-z was omitted.” But subsets can be created using any criteria for any field in a database. In a high stakes local or federal election, the omitted voters could be “women age 75 and up”, or “people who voted Democrat in the last election” or “people who live in houses that would be affected by a proposed land annexation.”
Obstruction through accident — or accidentally on purpose — has the effect of reducing the number of votes cast from that subset. While many voters will assert themselves or persevere using alternate methods, some will not. And the alternate methods carry risks of their own. What security procedures were in place with the alternate paper ballots, and was the public able to observe?
The best voting systems are simple. Internet voting is the worst option of all for a country that claims to be a democracy, because almost all essential steps in elections are concealed from the public using Internet voting.
Many different “reforms” that are dangerous to democracy are being ushered in using the popular justification of making it more “convenient” for people to vote. But this alleged convenience comes at great cost to the infrastructure of our democratic system. Essentially, to have a democratic system the people must be sovereign over their government; they achieve sovereignty though public elections, the key word being “PUBLIC” — and when any key step of the election is concealed from the public, the election ceases to be public, and the democratic structure itself is altered.
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