Creating Digital Democracy:
Implementing Online Elections in Student Government

Thanks to the 2000 presidential elections many voting processes on the national, state, and city levels have been called into question. As a nation we learned our current ways of voting were old and inadequate and their validity is vulnerable to human error. For weeks after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of George W. Bush debates and editorials on how to prevent the 2000 debacle from happening again flourished in a multitude of mediums. Anyone reading a local newspaper, national magazine, or watching CNN will tell you integrating technology into the election process was on the frontline of these discussions. Although the nation is far from being able to conduct a completely "online" election the opportunity to do so for student government elections in higher education institutions seemed plausible. The following is a case study of the implementation of a completely online election for Oakland University's Student Congress.

The Problem

Oakland's Student Congress in recent years has struggled while conducting their elections due to several reasons including low voter turnout and contest of final results. At the beginning of the 2001-2002 academic year it became a priority for Student Congress to redesign its election process in order to make it easier for a mostly commuter student population to cast a vote, count the votes, and ensure the voting process maintained its integrity through the voting period. The only solution that came close to being able to achieve these results was to create an online election process.

Once Student Congress came to the decision that they wanted to move forward with this project it didn't take long before I realized how big of an initiative this actually was. To begin with the project required a cooperative effort from Student Congress, the Dean of Students, the Vice President of Student Affairs, the Director of Information Technology and her staff, the university Webmaster, and the Office of the Registrar. In fact, getting all these people around the same table for a half hour period of time was only achieved once in the projects history and it was during this meeting that concerns regarding the security of the election, authenticating voters, ensuring all registered students would have Internet access to vote, and how the votes would be tallied were raised. Creating a process that could be easily reused from year to year was also a central issue.

The Solution

Thanks to Oakland's talented webmaster, John Coughlin, the solution that would be produced from the vision and brainstorming was far beyond what anyone could have expected. The first obstacle we had to tackle was how we would authenticate voters. We decided the best way would be to have the students use the same login ID and password that they used to register for classes online. This seemed more efficient because a large number of Oakland students register for their classes online (more then 50 percent) and we were confident they would be more familiar with this login as supposed to creating a new login for each student just for voting. With the help of Programmer Analyst Lakshmi Indiresh a process that used login information stored in SCT Banner was created. Because the login process went to Banner for authentication we were also able to verify a students eligibility to vote (only registered students can vote) in the same process.

Second, a voting application was created with an administration and voting module. The administration module is a Cold Fusion application and it is what made this entire project dynamic for reusability. Through a web based application the Student Congress Elections Commissioner was able to input a candidate's name, platform information, and picture into the election's ballot. The module was designed to run multiple elections at the same time and controls when the election begins and ends by the web server's time. Once the election starts the module locks out everyone except professional technical staff to ensure votes can't be tampered with. Furthermore, to make sure student login and voting information wasn't "sniffed" off the network server, certificates were used for encryption and the database that held the vote counts was placed behind multiple firewalls. When the election was over, built in reports were created to give final vote totals and a string comparison process was used to tally write-in candidate votes. In case the election was contested for any reason, the ability to print out all or any given ballot for recount and verification purposes was available. Next year, when it comes time to run a new election, the process is as simple as creating a new election in the administration module.

Although this project was technical in nature it did have its nontechnical aspects. For instance, since this was the first time a student organization at Oakland had attempted an online election we had to get the information out on how and when to vote. Articles pertaining to the election were posted on Oakland's webpage and printed in the student newspaper. Banners and flyers with election information were hung in the student union and a broadcast e-mail was sent out to all registered students. At first we were a little concerned some students may have forgotten or never used their registration login ID and password. However, because the election was around the same time registration for spring classes was taking place the registrar had sent a login ID and password reminder to all students a week before the election. Additionally, to ensure everyone had a chance to vote the Academic Computing department allowed students to use computer labs to vote and various departments around campus donated computers to use for voting booths setup around campus in areas with a high amount of student traffic.

The End Result: A One Vote Margin of Victory

When beginning the process of planning this year's election, there were many skeptics; people were concerned the system wouldn't be secure enough , people questioned whether or not the digital divide would disallow some votes, and some people were concerned a network outage could ruin the entire thing since no paper ballots were printed. What people didn't predict was possibly the most successful vote in Student Congress history. First, very few people called the Registrar's office for lost login ID's and passwords (the Registrar's office controls the ID's and passwords the students used). Second, the election recorded the most votes in Student Congress history with just shy of 1,300. This number represented 33% more votes than the 2001 election: an extremely good number for a campus that is mostly comprised of commuter students and has a large nontraditional student population.

During the election many students raved about how much they enjoyed being able to click on a candidate's name to see pictures and platform information. Most off all, they loved the fact they could vote from home or their dorm room. The election generated interested in local and state officials including Oakland County Clerk G. William Caddell and Secretary of State Candace Miller (Dillaber-Murray 2002).

Once the election was over it only took three hours to tally the votes. Amazingly enough, the new election format prevented exactly what it was designed to prevent in its first year. The election was decided by a single vote! The new high-tech process cut out human error from the tabulation process and successfully prevented multiple recounts and challenges to the elections validity (thus preventing a small scale debacle much like the 2000 presidential elections). The new election format successfully proved itself to the students, faculty, and administration in its inaugural year.

The Only Glitch

Although the election was more successful then anyone could have possibly predicted, there was one glitch to the process. Oakland's Student Congress election guidelines prohibit campaigning near polling stations. Although we roped off the allotted space around the voting booths we didn't realize until after the election had started that computer labs should be off limits from campaigning because they are essentially voting booths during the elections. We had several candidates leaving sticky notes on lab monitors, hanging large banners in labs, and candidates were walking =p to students while studying in labs lobbing for votes. However, this was one minor oversight for such an elaborate project. Needless to say the election guidelines have been rewritten to accommodate the new technology and Student Congress is looking forward to its second online election in 2003!

References

Dillaber-Murray, Diana. "High-Tech Democracy." The Oakland Press, 26 Mar. 2002

Special Thanks

John Coughlin - Oakland University Webmaster

Lakshmi Indiresh - Oakland University Programmer Analyst

Kelly Lee - Oakland University Student Congress Elections Commissioner (2001-2002)