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.”
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