OIT OKs online election
By HELENA PAYNE
News Editor
A total of 1,361 votes later, the first online mock election resulted in the victory of the Knute Rockne-Tyrone Willingham ticket, as well as the certainty that students will have their first real online election Monday.
"It's a go," said Dave Mastic, Web technology administrator for the Office of Information Technologies.
Members of OIT monitored the Monday mock elections, where students chose between eight tickets that included Notre Dame-related celebrities such as Regis Philbin, Condoleezza Rice and Phil Donahue.
The most frequent problem encountered, Mastic said, was students' inability to vote because of security features on their browsers. Many students have secured their computers against cookies, which are stored on the hard drive and enable the server to store information about the user regarding Web activity.
"It's necessary to have cookie support in order to vote," Mastic said, adding that the OIT Help Desk (631-8111) could assist students who were unable to vote.
Although the actual election is scheduled to occur online Monday, vice president of elections for the judicial council, Matt Corgan, said he hopes more students will participate.
"I thought [participation] was kind of low for how easy it was to vote but I realize that it was just a trial election," he said.
Although sophomore Thomas Cordoba did not vote in mock elections, he said he would definitely be encouraged to vote Monday.
"I didn't even know," he said. "If it's better publicized, you're going to see a lot better voter turnout."
Sophomore Anna Kate Milburn, who participated in the mock election, said it was important to her to help student government run a test election and that she would "definitely" vote in the upcoming contest.
However, some students are unaffected by the opportunity to vote online.
Sophomore Matt Harris said, "I don't feel like [student government] ever gets anything done."
Brian Coughlin, director of student activities, said he was certain that more students would vote in the real online elections.
"I have a hunch that [the] online election is going to get one of the biggest turnouts that any of us can remember," he said. "In the actual election, I think people will realize the importance of their vote."
Just like the mock election, the student body president race will be online from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. There are seven tickets, all of whom will have an opportunity to share their platforms with students during a debate today at 8 p.m. in the LaFortune ballroom. Additionally, all students received e-mails this morning from the Judicial Council with information about the candidates and links to their Web sites.
Class elections are also scheduled to occur online Feb. 24, but Corgan said this will happen only if there are no problems Monday.
All News Stories for Wednesday, February 5, 2003
