University elections will be more secure and more transparent this spring, according to University Board of Elections officials, who finalized the UBE elections calendar and its rules and regulations yesterday.
The Office of the General Council approved both documents yesterday afternoon, said Madelyn Wessel, special advisor to the vice president for student affairs.
Voting for spring elections will begin March 2 and end March 4.
There are several changes in the procedure designed to make elections more secure.
"First and foremost we've upped all security aspects of the system," said Chris Husser, Student Council chief technology adviser.
Husser said students will be able to use their e-mail ID instead of their social security number when logging on to the system.
Voters also will no longer be allowed to write in votes.
"The fact that there is no write-in capacity on the ballot was a major concern for the UBE, but the rules and regulations and elections calendar were crafted in order to make the balloting procedure as open as possible so that write-in candidates would basically become superfluous," UBE Chair Brian Cook said.
The UBE's rules and regulations state that candidates must submit a petition signed by a specific number of students in order to be placed on the ballot. The number of signatures required varies by office, but Cook said they aimed for a baseline around 2 percent of represented students.
Husser said the elimination of the write-in feature was "not so much a security thing as [a matter of] efficiency and less room for human error."
Candidates also now must submit an interim expenditure report, detailing their "personal expenditures on campaign materials and services," and "expenditures utilizing funds donated to a candidate or his/her campaign," as stated in UBE's rules and regulations. Endorsing organizations also are encouraged to submit expenditure reports.
UBE members said the expenditure information will be made available to the public.
"We want the election process to be as transparent as possible," Cook said. "If we see a need to put some sort of expenditure limit in place we may set up a type of incentive-based limit for future boards to use."
There also will be a new system for run-off elections, in which winners can be determined without additional voting. Students will rank candidates during their original voting session, and if no candidate receives a majority of top-choice votes, Instant Runoff Voting will come into play. This system eliminates the candidate or candidates with the fewest votes, distributing second-choice votes to the remaining candidates.
"IRV will automatically calculate who the winner is without additional elections," Husser said.
The elections calendar is available on UBE's Web site and includes a detailed timeline for candidates and students. UBE members said they were enthusiastic about the election reforms.
"I just think it's going to be much more democratic," UBE member Erin D'Onfro said.
Editor's note: UBE Chair Brian Cook is a former member of the Cavalier Daily managing board but no longer has any affiliation with the newspaper.
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