Council Gears Up For Fall Elections

As Undergraduate Council candidates gear up for the official start of campaigning this Sunday at 5:00 p.m., the council itself is rushing to prevent potential problems in the elections.

This year, the council hopes to enable students to vote for their representatives via a web-based system accessible through the council’s new website. This is a sizeable technological step up from the telnet-based system used in elections over the past few years.

But although the council hired students who worked throughout last summer to revamp the website, efforts are coming down to the wire to get the website and new voting system running without problems.

Council President Sujean S. Lee ’03 said the new website is expected to debut this Friday, which she says would leave ample time to resolve any glitches that might arise before voting commences on Oct. 1.

But some council members said yesterday they have reservations about the new system—even if it works as planned.

Students are expected to use their personal identification numbers in order to cast their ballots. But first-years’ lack of familiarity with the use of PINs, along with upperclass students losing or forgetting their PINs, could pose an obstacle to voting.

“There is a bit of concern,” said Oluseyi A. Fayanju ’05, a member of the council’s six-person Election Commission.

Rebecca A. Mildrew ’06 said yesterday of the PIN voting requirement, “That would be a problem for me. I don’t know mine.”

Lee and Fayanju said the council will attempt to circumvent the problem by publicizing how to vote with e-mails, posters and an ad in The Crimson.

But Lee said every student will get a chance to vote regardless of whether problems arise.

“We will come up with the solutions,” she said.

Lee described the forthcoming new website as “one of the biggest improvements in general in the UC.”

Jared S. Morgenstern ’03 and Edward D. Lim ’01-’02 “completely rewrote the system,” according to Lee.

“It’s completely new. I don’t even know if people can appreciate how new it is because they never visited the old one,” she said.

The need for a new website was highlighted by numerous problems created by the telnet-based system in the past.

In August 2001, a power outage caused the council’s central computer to reboot and send out thousands of e-mail messages confirming votes that students had cast in the previous year’s council elections.

Then, in December 2001, the council’s presidential election was stalled when the internal clock of the computer responsible for servicing the election, which had been set for the year 2036, reset itself and locked some students out of the election.

Aside from the web-based balloting, this year’s election protocol will differ little from past procedure, though students interested in running for the council will now be able to submit their declarations of candidacy online.

—Staff writer Alexander J. Blenkinsopp can be reached at blenkins@fas.harvard.edu.