In the wake of a discovery that members of Student Council accessed the elections database during last week's University elections, Council agreed Sunday to allow a member of the Honor Committee to oversee the run-off election for Council president and to change the access code to the voting database.
The run-off election between Council presidential candidates Ed Hallen and Daisy Lundy began yesterday and will conclude at 8 p.m. tonight.
Lundy supporters allege that the infraction was significant because it allowed individuals who should not have had access to vote totals to access that information and potentially share it with others.
Council Voting Administrator Greg Joiner said altering vote tallies is extremely difficult and unlikely, noting the high degree of knowledge one would have to posses to alter votes.
University Democrats Vice President Ryan Hughes discovered the questionable logon Friday evening after noting that someone had been logged onto the Council server as the Council Voting Administrator since 3 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 18 -- the day voting began.
Hughes said he traced the login to fourth-year College student Daniel Haspel's Lawn room using Haspel's IP address.
Haspel was the previous voting administrator and logged in using last year's password, which had not been changed. Haspel said Sunday that, as an integral system administrator, he was allowed by the election committee to monitor the election results in order to check for technical errors.
Though he acknowledged receiving vote tallies for the reading days referendum from Haspel during the election, Council President Micah Schwartz said he was not aware Haspel was logged on to the server before being confronted with Hughes' discovery.
Schwartz said he assumed Haspel had gotten the numbers from Joiner.
"It was an oversight," Schwartz said.
However, Lundy claims the incident is suspect and supported appointing a third party observer.
Hallen also consented to Honor oversight.
"I think it's in all of our best interests to have elections go as smoothly as possible to ensure that the people truly get to make the decision," Hallen said.
Candidates and their supporters assumed Honor Committee Chairman Chris Smith would serve as the third party and that his observation would begin with voting on Tuesday morning, Coalition Chair Ryan McCarthy said.
Joiner said he changed the pass-code Sunday evening and that only he and the third party observer were to have access to it. The third party observer had not, however, been given the code as of yesterday evening, Joiner said.
Schwartz attributed the delay to a misunderstanding between himself and Council Vice President for Administration Atima Omara-Awala, who mistakenly appointed someone else to the position.
"I delegated the process [of choosing a third party] to Atima," Schwartz said.
"She misunderstood and thought the person only had to be there Thursday night when the votes came in. She also misunderstood that it was supposed to be Chris or someone Chris appointed."
Due to the confusion, there was no third party observer during the first day of run-off voting yesterday.
After discovering the error, the elections committee chose to contact Smith to ask him to act as the third party observer or to appoint someone to the task, Schwartz said.
In a related development, yesterday, the election committee decided not to issue sanctions against Hallen for alleged campaign violations.
Hallen's violations stem from a group calling themselves "Students for Issues not Politics" which posted fliers around Grounds Sunday night labeled "anti-Daisy." Hallen appealed the violation and the elections committee granted his appeal.
According to Elections Committee Chair Julie Teater, the committee granted Hallen's appeal because it determined the group who posted the fliers was not affiliated with Hallen and that their actions did not benefit his campaign.
McCarthy said he hoped this year's controversy would lead to future elections being administered entirely by a third party, a move Schwartz said he supported.
"We're going to put our best heads together after the election to further distance the election administration from Student Council," Schwartz said.
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