St. Francis student newspaper, September 27, 2004
by Charlie Wolfe
The Student Government Association (SGA) has announced the winners of the elections for the student senate. The elections were conducted online in a new SGA initiative designed to increase efficiency and voter turnout.
The senate is comprised of representatives from each residence hall as well as commuter and Greek system representatives. The candidate with the highest number of votes is elected for a full one-year term, while the second-place finisher is elected to a half-year term.
Winners of a full term are (district in parantheses): Cassie Marsh (St. Joan), Kristine Kolosky (St. Clare), Earle Noel (St. Agnes, still on from last semester), Taryn Gibson (St. Elizabeth, still on from last semester), Chris Johns (St. Louis), Lou Motley (Amici), Nick Creany (Giles), Theresa Szkromiuk (Ave Maria), Sam Jones (commuter) and Brad Williams (Greek).
Winners of a half-year term (district in parantheses) are: Kristin Squires (Saint Joan), Julie Ropp (St. Clare), Ryan Roche (St. Agnes), Amy Miceli (St. Elizabeth), Joe Smith (St. Louis), Mandel Frazier (Giles), Katie Greiner (Ave Maria), Cal Adams (commuter) and Lauren Dixon (Greek).
"I'm pretty psyched about being elected," said Amy Miceli. She plans to "voice all the opinions of my hallmates to the SGA" and is also looking to improve the online book buyback system.
Ryan Roche, who will be representing St. Agnes for a second year, said that he was "honored" and would "do the best I can to get the student's voices heard."
Theresa Szkromiuk was surprised to learn that she was elected to the senate. "I'm hoping to be a little more involved. I've never been in student government before and I wanted to give it a try."
"I plan to have regular meetings in St. Louis for residents to voice their opinions," said Chris Johns. He also plans to work on getting the hall vending machines.
This election marked the first time that voting was done online. The idea for Internet voting was from SGA's Vice-President for Finance Adam Peters. The executive board decided to switch from traditional paper balloting to the Internet because they "felt that online voting would be more efficient than the old system of paper ballots, and that it would also lead to a higher voter turnout," said Lauren Cascino, executive vice-president for SGA.
While the accessibility that online voting offers makes sense on a campus of laptops, the new system is also good in terms of dollars and cents, according to Peters. "We also saved a lot of money by doing it this way."
One major concern raised about online voting is security (there were allegations of online voting fraud at the University of Alabama in 2003), which was addressed by Computer Service's Craig Sikurinec. Sikurinec used the PIN numbers given to students to access the unversity's data system to ensure "that each vote was unique and came from an appropriate person," said Sikurinec.
Looking at the numbers provided by Peters, there was an increase in turnout this year. There were 367 votes cast in this year's online election, as compared to 298 recorded in September 2003 and 345 in November 2003.
The class breakdown of the votes is 118 freshmen, 80 sophomores, 79 juniors and 79 seniors utilized the online voting system. These numbers show promise, according to Peters. "I think that election turnout will continue to increase, mainly by looking at high turnout of the freshmen class, and since it will be online now they will be used to the new style of elections once the current freshmen are seniors I can see turnout hitting over 500 students," said Peters.
The turnout can be better judged against figures from other universities. SFU's turnout of 367 voters (97 percent of the voters are listed as undergraduates) of 1,169 undergraduate students gives a turnout rate of 31 percent. The University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown's (UPJ) spring 2004 elections for president and vice-president of the student senate, which uses paper balloting, saw roughly 420 votes cast out of 2,000 students, according to Michael Fagan, the treasurer of the student senate. This gives UPJ a turnout rate of 21 percent.
The main branch of Penn State University in University Park (PSU) had their "biggest voting year yet," according to their election results website. Student government official Ryan Bennington said that 10,977 votes were cast on PSU's online system, out of a student population of 36,000, giving Penn State a turnout rate of 30 percent. Calls to the Altoona branch of Penn State and Mount Aloysius College were not returned.
Looking at the numbers, it seems that there is a correlation between online voting systems and increased voter turnout. Perhaps the most dramatic example comes from Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). According to an article from The Chronice of Higher Education, turnout rates at CMU were hovering below 10 percent, anywhere from 7 percent to as low as 2 percent. However, after online voting was implemented at the school, turnout rates jumped to 25 percent. The Chronicle of Higher Education also noted increased turnout at Boston College and Clemson, Emory, and West Virginia universities.
Dr. David Anderson of The Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars and Youth `04 sees online voting as the wave of the future. In an op-ed he wrote published by several publications, he argues that online voting should be considered for government elections, not just those on college campuses. He calls college-aged students "the most Net-savvy group of Americans," and told The Troubadour that "young people will bring the net to the older generations."
Online voting has in fact been used in elections in Oregon, Arizona, and Michigan.
Special thanks to SGA, Dr. David Anderson, and Brian Namey, CMU's former student body president for contributing to this report.