Student body officer elections brought a refreshing slew of campaigns to the contested races this year, with creativity and student interaction.
From news headline printed bubblegum packs encouraging students to “Burst the Bradley Bubble” to interactive graphics and Facebook pages asking students how candidates can be the “megaphone that gives a voice to [student] concerns,” the work candidates put into their campaigns was commendable. And students noticed.
With 1,393 students casting ballots, the number of students showing up to the polls more than doubled from last year’s student turnout. This was also apparent at the winner’s announcement in Student Center Atrium, as last year’s fewer than 10 students grew to nearly six times the size to support their respective candidates.
But, to the student body’s dismay, the voting process was flawed, yet again.
On Tuesday, while elections were still open, The Scout was leaked information as early as 5 p.m. regarding the direction in which the voting numbers were trending. One of our sources received voting trend statistics as early as 1 p.m, and by Wednesday morning, we had already talked with three different sources who had been informed of the same voting trends.
Now, The Scout is only claiming that multiple sources leaked this information directly to our staff members. We have neither proof nor merit to accuse students of having such information. However, it does beg the question: if we knew who was winning and losing, were we the only ones?
We have confirmed with the voting process officials that not a single vote was tampered with once collected. But what about votes before they were collected? What if a student heard about the way votes were leaning and voted as a result of those trends?
As one of the voting process officials told The Scout, “Unless [the voting process] is controlled by someone that’s not a student, you’re going to have [the possibility of leaked information] happen. I’m sure of it.”
So how are students still allowed to have any access at all to these results? And how do we know the officials that are aiding in this process are also maintaining confidentiality and fostering an environment of discretion?
The fault is on the Student Senate who did not bother to take such a key precaution.
The two Student Senators who had access to these results should not have been put in a situation where they are burdened with the responsibility of running a student voting process, especially not when all four of the current student body officers (their current Student Senate superiors) were running. And especially not when races for President of the Student Body and Speaker of the Assembly were within the most miniscule percentage of each other.
And although the Student Senate bylaws note that the director of Student Activities “shall officially inform appropriate University officials of election results immediately following the public announcement of the results,” we know for a fact that this informing of officials happened nearly eight hours before the official announcement.
Furthermore, Student Senate’s Vice President of Student Affairs was given the results two hours prior to the official announcement, upon signing a confidentiality agreement, so that she could “post the results on social media,” according to the director of Student Activities. These results, as is evidenced on The Scout’s social media, could have been obtained at the event, seeing as the Senate posted all results at the same time if not later than all of The Scout’s postings.
Therefore, as the Senate looks forward to next year, we urge the new cabinet to put a system in place that removes all student access to election results, from the way votes are collected to the time they are announced, and to hold administrators accountable for how information is shared in accordance with the official Student Senate Bylaws.
If we’re really going to institute “A Brave Change,” we need to see strict adherence to policies and procedures that were written for these very reasons.
