Some students experienced technical problems with the University Board of Elections Web site yesterday morning.
UBE officials said the problem has been fixed, and students now can log on to the Web site from any computer.
The UBE ran into unexpected trouble when it set up a second domain name, www.uvavote.com, to make it easier for student to access the voting site. The cloaking technology required to implement the second domain name prevented students with some types of browsers and security settings from logging on to vote.
"I was not able to vote from home," said Lela Graham, Student Council representative from the School of Continuing and Professional Studies. "I had to change a setting, enabling cookies, and I did not want to do that at home. I went to Alderman [Library] and did not have any problems."
Graham expressed concern about her constituents in the School of Continuing and Professional Studies who are likely to be voting from home or work and would probably not want to enable cookies.
College student Paul Aiken, who distributed campaign literature on the Lawn, said he also had difficulties with the site.
"Basically, I tried to vote, and it said 'access denied' because of something to do with security," Aiken said. "I had to enable cookies. It could definitely turn away people who want to vote."
UJC candidate Joe Schilling expressed concerns beyond the cookie restrictions. The Web site asks voters for their "CMS or BLUE.unix user ID" when they log in.
"A lot of people didn't know that a CMS account was just asking for an e-mail ID," Schilling said.
Schilling added that the content of the Council referendum was set as a link that created a pop-up. According to Schilling, voters with pop-up blockers would have to change their settings before they could view the referendum.
"The links are designed so that people can read the entire proposals," UBE Vice Chair Steve Yang said. "Obviously we've run into problems, but we're working to fix them."
According to Chris Husser, technology coordinator for student activities, most voters seemed unaffected by the Web site's technical issues.
Husser said while several hundred people voted during the first two hours, the UBE only received a few dozen e-mail complaints.
"It seemed like it was an intermittent and small percentage of people who it was affecting," he said.
Most technical problems were addressed by yesterday afternoon.
"It is completely fixed to the best of our knowledge," UBE Chair Brian Cook said.
Cook added that the cloaking problems with the Web site were not an issue during the mock presidential election because the UBE did not have the www.uvavote.com domain at the time.
Despite minor problems, Cook said he was satisfied with the way the elections were running.
"It has been bumpy, but as a whole it has been going well," he said. "The hard work of so many people put into this is really paying off."
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