Software breakdown results in VSA paper ballots

Katie Paul Staff Writer

The Vassar Student Association (VSA) passed a resolution on Sunday, April 16 to conduct their elections using paper ballots, a departure from the on-line voting system used since 1997. In a campus-wide e-mail sent late Sunday evening, the VSA Council and Board of Elections wrote that the change to paper ballots was made because “the VSA elections software continues to malfunction as a result [of] the shift onto a new server and the hacking of the VSA server earlier this year.”

The paper ballot election is one result of the most recent series of problems that have plagued the VSA server. The VSA voted to upgrade their server in April 2005, but have continued to face technical difficulties since then.

A hacking incident discovered in December 2005 proved to be the most troublsome issue facing the server for the spring 2006 elections. Computing and Information Services (CIS), which houses the new VSA server, raised concern about the security of the elections software after discovering the incident.
“We determined that the server had been hacked into right before winter break during the shift over to the CIS server, because CIS noticed unusual activity on the VSA’s old server,” said VSA President Rick Rodems ’06. After detecting the hack, CIS did not allow the VSA to continue using any software that had been compromised by the incident, including the elections software.

In January, VSA Vice-President Kelsey Woods ’06 and VSA Webmaster Josh de Leeuw ’08 found an untainted draft version of the original elections software, which they intended to use for this week’s elections. Before discovering this draft version, the VSA had considered employing a professional election company rather than rewriting the complex software themselves. However, they determined outside help was impractical due to the VSA’s unique voting system.

“The elections software was written by Vassar students when the VSA instituted Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) at the beginning of this decade,” said Rodems. “Because of the specifics regarding how Vassar voting works, there is not any off-the-shelf commercial product available to us.”

IRV is an uncommon voting technique that allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference. In the absence of a majority, the system automatically redistributes votes based on that preference until one candidate hits the “threshold,” which is simply a majority of the votes cast. “

The idea behind [IRV] is to give people more of a voice,” said Woods.

According to Board of Elections Co-Chair Justin Mahony ’06, VSA webmasters de Leeuw and Alison Abreu-Garcia ’08 had been working since February to reconstruct the old software so that it resembled the version they had worked with before it was hacked. VSA ran test elections throughout the semester and attempted to fix any problems they found with the program.

But at noon on Sunday, April 16 de Leeuw recommended that the VSA use paper ballots since he could not guarantee that the software would be ready for the voting period which was scheduled to start on Monday, April 17.

“We’ve been trying to remedy the glitches and came very close to having it ready in time, but the webmasters ultimately concluded that it was not possible to run the elections on that software as-is,” said Rodems.

Starting Sunday, Woods and Terrace Apartments President Liz Kaeser ’06 researched how paper ballots had been used in the past. Based on their research, the VSA developed a plan for the paper ballots, which was amended and approved unanimously at the VSA Council meeting that night.

According to the resolution, the voting period was moved to start on Tuesday at 8 a.m., and two voting stations would be set up—one in the College Center for the Classes of 2006 and 2007, and one in the All Campus Dining Center for the Classes of 2008 and 2009.

After the Council meeting, VSA began a campaign to publicize the new paper ballot system, using posters, banners, flyers, e-mails, and their elections website to notify the student body of the change.
Woods said that after weighing a series of other options, the VSA ultimately chose to use paper ballots in order “to preserve the integrity of the VSA elections.”

“We have been up until 4 a.m. every night since Sunday strategizing about how to redesign a manual system that has not been in use for nearly ten years, a task that would normally take months but which we had to do in only two days,” said Mahony.