ASCSU election not likely to be recalled

Associated Students of CSU members are learning all about

networking.

Whether it is a network of gossip or a computer network, ASCSU

members have heard it all this week.

Last week, Sara Stieben, a member of Dustin Zvonek and Kyle

McCarthy’s presidential and vice presidential campaign, requested

information detailing the time each vote was received and whom it

was for. This action caused some people to assume the document was

to be used to check for some sort of voting fraud.

Zvonek and McCarthy have denied any involvement.

“We never had any plans to appeal the election,” Zvonek said.

“Kyle and I have never talked about it.”

Stieben could not be reached for comment.

ASCSU President Jesse Lauchner requested a copy of the same

document after the gossip began to spread. Everything checked

out.

” Jason (Huitt, ASCSU speaker pro tempore) and I went through it

page by page,” Lauchner said. “There’s definitely no pattern to

anything, it was all sporadic and radical.”

He also said it would be very difficult for someone to illegally

influence the online election.

“To hack into an ACNS server, you’d have to be God,” Lauchner

said. “That’s out of the question.”

The only stumbling block for the computer system, which was

through RAMweb, was an error that took place in the senatorial

ballots on the first day of voting. The glitch essentially allowed

students to vote repeatedly for the same senatorial candidate.

Alan Asher, web designer for presidential-campaign election

winners Katie Clausen and Ben Goldstein, noticed the error and

reported it to Academic and Computer Networking Services.

“I just looked at the page and looked at the code and knew

something wasn’t right, so I reported it to ACNS,” Asher said. “It

had no effect on the presidential and vice presidential outcome. I

guarantee you there’s no way that the presidential and vice

presidential campaign is even possible to be messed with.”

The problem was found and fixed early on April 5.

“It was caught very early Monday morning,” said Mari Strombom,

director of Campus Activities and adviser to ASCSU. “I believe I

heard Chris (Seng, director of Student Systems and Enrollment

Services) say they only caught one or two incidents so those

ballots were disregarded.”

Asher is hoping talk of this error does not start another

network of unfounded assumptions.

“I just hope you don’t have senators walking in here saying they

lost because of this,” Asher said. “It really doesn’t mater if

there was a mistake. We caught this very early.”

Candidates still have until Saturday at 8 p.m. to appeal

election results, but most members of ASCSU are hoping to put the

whole thing behind them.

“The thing is we’re all adults and we should be able to come in

and talk to each other,” Zvonek said. “Everything was good, it was

great.”