Controversy Over SGA Voting Procedure

By Roger Champagne

The Student Government Association (SGA) Senate elections, which took place on September 21st, are being questioned about the voting process.

According to sources, SGA Executive Board Members, who were in charge of voting, were unable to differentiate which students were members of which academic school and year when tallying the votes.

When students logged onto The Nest to vote for their class and school representative, they were met with the option of being able to cast votes for all years and all nine schools.

“That was really confusing to me,” said freshman Senator James Harrington. “Especially with kids that are undeclared, It’s just a confusing process.”

Along with creating confusion among voters, this led to students voting for candidates outside of their year and department, which according to SGA would not count.

SGA accomplished this by matching up students against their year and department. However, due to an unknown error in the voting system something went wrong in relation to the votes cast for the School of Social Service, with SGA not properly being able to count which votes should be considered valid. Due to the complication, SGA Executives hand validated each vote.

Students are puzzled by this situation because there really has been no clear answer provided by SGA concerning how the votes were tallied and what specifically happened with the School of Social Service.

“It is honestly unfair,” said freshman Media Studies major, Tess Plaza. “Even if those on SGA validated the votes fairly the fact that they, in theory, could have rigged the votes is not okay.”

A confusing voting system, along with a critical error has caused students to call into question the current process of SGA voting, in the hopes that future elections will be more streamlined and transparent.

When asked about the recent elections and the School of Social Service, SGA President, Anne St. Amant, and Vice President, James Benedek, declined to comment.