Online voting for Student Government and Residence Hall Associate elections got off to a rocky start Tuesday morning.
The Kogod School of Business Class Council race did not appear on the ballot during the first three hours of online voting for elections Monday, according to Office of Information Technology Web Developer Marico Hawes.
The glitch only prevented students from voting on Kogod class representatives, not elections for other SG positions or RHA. The race for Kogod president is uncontested, with other Kogod SG positions empty.
“We had to update a code in the system so that the Kogod students could see all the people that they were supposed to vote for and vote for them,” Hawes said.
The problem was fixed by noon on Tuesday. Online voting for Kogod students will be extended by three hours to make up for the lost time, Hawes said.
In addition to placing a link for Kogod elections on the front of the portal, an e-mail with the updated election link was sent to Kogod students, Hawes said.
“As with anything when you have a large population of users that are set up differently, things may show up differently to different users and as we report things back, we correct things as soon as possible,” Hawes said.
This is not the first year that online elections have encountered difficulties.
Last year, a technical glitch delayed the announcement of which students won write-in spots in SG.
“We made sure that this year the resulting reporting, everything’s pointing to the right place, so when they give out the results, they should be the correct results,” Hawes said.
In 2009, then-presidential candidate Andy MacCracken didn’t appear on the ballot for the first seven minutes and students in some residence halls were unable to vote for RHA positions at first. MacCracken won the election.
“We checked the ballot quite a few times before it went live to make sure that everybody appears,” Hawes said.
mzoglo@theeagleonline.com
