Creating Digital Democracy:
Implementing Online Elections in Student Government
Steven R.
Meyer
Information Systems Specialist
Division of Student Affairs - Oakland
University
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)
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