Hi Guys,
I had a few random questions bothering me for some time, Just wondering if someone from the SRA could answer them:

Q1: Online voting: As everyone knows the voter turnout at our elections even upto the Presidential level is embarrasingly low. We can have several psycological/sociological theories and explanations for why there is such a level of apathy but imo the turnout can increase atleast upto 40-50% if we create online voting through WebCt/Msu.ca. A good number of us spend hours procastinating online and carrying our laptop's everywhere, it would only seem logical that online voting would work out. Eg: a elections webpage with a "limited" 200-300 word proposal/portfolio(with links to their bigger one if someone's interested) that helps even those who have no idea to make a choice!
If I recall correctly Andrew Richardson from Humanities was working on it, any updates?

Q2: Lowering Courseware and Textbook fees: A number of SRA candidates much to my "disbelief" have promised this whole "I will lower your courseware/textbook fees everyone!!!" slogan and have even gotten elected! The question now is according to my observations the consensus has been that this is plausible idea. Can we somehow print coursewares at Underground and magically lower our costs? Will Titles allow it?

Also if any other MSU members have any questions you are more then welcome to ask them in this thread! The SRA members have gotten elected on the "accountability"/"Student interaction" slogan, I suppose we have a right to ask these questions?

Thanks!

1. For question one, I believe that it was a goal of this year's committee but they came across a few bugs in their plan that they would need to work out and they ran out of time before presidentials came about. But, it is for sure in the works. I'll expect Richardson will have a longer schpeal about this.

2. Many coursewares have been printed through the underground and they are a lot better not only in price but in quality as well. The thing is to just get the profs on board with this. Azim had met with department chairs over the years and the process is building.
As for textbook prices, there are ways that SRA members have lobbied on your behalf on this issue. There was a committee with titles, I believe. The VP Education also works with CRAM, the Canadian Roundtable on Academic Materials. Check out the website to see more about this group

Neither of these were my pet projects this year so I'm sure you'll get a longer schpiel from those more tied to it.

Originally Posted by huzaifa47

Hi Guys,
I had a few random questions bothering me for some time, Just wondering if someone from the SRA could answer them:

Q1: Online voting: As everyone knows the voter turnout at our elections even upto the Presidential level is embarrasingly low. We can have several psycological/sociological theories and explanations for why there is such a level of apathy but imo the turnout can increase atleast upto 40-50% if we create online voting through WebCt/Msu.ca. A good number of us spend hours procastinating online and carrying our laptop's everywhere, it would only seem logical that online voting would work out. Eg: a elections webpage with a "limited" 200-300 word proposal/portfolio(with links to their bigger one if someone's interested) that helps even those who have no idea to make a choice!
If I recall correctly Andrew Richardson from Humanities was working on it, any updates?

Thanks!

Hey Huzaifa,

Thanks for the great question. I definitely feel like E-Voting is one way to increase student participation within MSU elections, but I don't think it's the only one. I think voter apathy is a mix of various factors, including our voting system, but moreover it also includes such problems like

- Perceived lack of relevancy of the MSU
- Busy schedules of our student constituents (which could be solved via E-Voting)
- Dismay at the current political on goings
- Disappointing Candidates/Campaign Sides in some instances

And of course many other things, but you are correct, a new voting method would increase voter turn out at least somewhat and it would reduce paper waste of our current system and make recounting ballots an instant process.

As for using our website (www.msumcmaster.ca), it is possible. When we set out to get our website redone the company that got the contract was working on an elections module that could be installed into the back-end programming of the site. The only issue I (and many of my colleagues) have with this is that voting for serious elections and referenda could be compromised in terms of security if a hacker made their way into the network, or if a candidate went into say Mills or Thode, or another computer lab and pressured students to login and vote.

So internet-based voting has it's problems in terms of security, but also if we eliminate the polling stations we essentially are without need of hiring poll clerks or a DRO anymore. So we would lose student jobs, which isn't something the MSU usually sets out to do as we want to create jobs for students in any way we can.

A lot of us are looking at an intranet-based system that would essentially be electronic terminals supervised by a poll clerk with a student list, linked to the main network or otherwise available to download voting results. I've been doing some research into this and I've come to the conclusion that it would cost more, but it would save student jobs and deliver most of the benefits of internet voting minus the security problem.

The only catch is that during the last few months of research I've not been able to come up with any viable systems on the market so we might be looking at a custom job. I had a housemate once who was seeing someone who programmed debit terminals (like in stores) and could get them to read student cards and take election data, so this is one method we could look at.

So really in sum we're still in the research phase and since I will cease to be the SRA Operations Commissioner as of April 1st new voting systems will fall to the responsibility of the new Ops Commissioner. I'll be preparing a briefing for them on my research and progress though and with any luck I'll be able to see some progress made on electoral reform over this coming summer.

If you have any more questions or suggestions, please contact me, I'd love to hear ideas or more questions. Either get me via email (available on the MSU site) or I can normally be found hovering in or around the main MSU office.

- Andrew

see what I mean by a longer schpiel?

And he's not kidding about the hovering.

Thanks Andrew!
But I was hoping you could clarify a couple of more points. The "Hacker" concern, has it been verified by an IT expert(Or could one of the Computer Engineering students at Insiders comment please?) that a hacker could somehow hack into Webct or the MSU website Irregardless of the secruity implements we have in place? Like we could even add a few personal sign in prompts similar to the secret questions a MACID user has for his/her account :S

Secondly the online voting would be an improvement to the electoral process, the poll clerks will still have a job(lol I actually happen to be one!) since our main objective is to improve the 10-12% turnout and not replace the system entirely.
But I do agree the costs for the elections committee would increase.

But I think the intranet system looks far more viable then the internet(Having seen a few 3rd party websites*), I do hope next years OpCom realizes the importance of investing into online voting!



And well as far as harrasment goes, the pessimist little me still thinks there is a good amount of "indirect" votes cast by friends, facebook friends, mutual lobbied friends and as I sadly observed in the last SRA election shouting/harrasing directly in MUSC to random passerby's OUT of the already low number of votes cast. Apathy is sadly extremely prevalent.


*http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~dme26/proj/BOB/

But I was hoping you could clarify a couple of more points. The "Hacker" concern, has it been verified by an IT expert(Or could one of the Computer Engineering students at Insiders comment please?) that a hacker could somehow hack into Webct or the MSU website Irregardless of the secruity implements we have in place? Like we could even add a few personal sign in prompts similar to the secret questions a MACID user has for his/her account :S

The network security concern is one of the MSU Network Administrator, who is the closest 'expert' on IT matters I have access to. Suffice to say a lot of people are very, very wary of using the internet to cast votes and if current opinion holds I doubt the SRA would permit the use of the internet.

Secondly the online voting would be an improvement to the electoral process, the poll clerks will still have a job(lol I actually happen to be one!) since our main objective is to improve the 10-12% turnout and not replace the system entirely.
But I do agree the costs for the elections committee would increase.

Electronic Voting would indeed help, of that I am certain. I am also really concerned with keeping students at Mac employed, hence is why I'm a huge fan of the intranet model

P.S I used to be a poll clerk *poll clerk high five*

As for that link... I'll forward it on to our Network Admin for consultation, maybe we can use this as a starting point?

And well as far as harrasment goes, the pessimist little me still thinks there is a good amount of "indirect" votes cast by friends, facebook friends, mutual lobbied friends and as I sadly observed in the last SRA election shouting/harrasing directly in MUSC to random passerby's OUT of the already low number of votes cast.

*cough* As someone who was campaigning in MUSC, I can confidently say that no one around me campaigning 'harrassed' anyone or shouted things, we stood there to remain visible to voters and to answer any questions they might have, it was actually a really effective method of election/campaign awareness advertising and a way of interacting with constituents. I know I found it to be very enlightening.

Online voting could increase UMSU election turnout

By news
Created 10/20/2008 - 22:03

Independent companies like the California-based BigPulse, established in 2000, allow universities to set up interactive voting websites that are designed to help facilitate online student elections. BigPulse claims to increase the voter turnout in student elections anywhere between 50 and 100 per cent. Voter turnout in UMSU elections has recently averaged between six to 11 per cent per year.
The BigPulse system requires a student council administrator inputs the names of both the candidates and the eligible voters into a secure online database. On voting day, students can login to their own personal account and make their selections over the Internet.
According to the director of BigPulse, Dominic Swinn, voter turnout will increase as a result of steps the company has taken to increase the convenience for voters. One of these steps includes sending assistance and reminder messages to each student’s university e-mail address.
“We have found that it is very effective just to keep hitting people up every couple days with a reminder [to vote]. It definitely increases participation [ . . . ] and then the ease to access a poll from wherever you are really saves time,” Swinn said.
Swinn said he also believes that the BigPulse security system, including tight encryption and the individual student accounts, is both safe and reliable.
Swinn claimed BigPulse has “higher security than the average banking website” and guaranteed that his system will “maintain the integrity of an election.”
UMSU president Jonny Sopotiuk expressed concern for the potential for “electoral fraud” and said he thinks that an online system is never completely safe, regardless of the precautions taken.
“As any good computer science student will attest to, no online system is totally secure, whether this involves exploiting flaws in the software used or tricking individual voters is irrelevant,” said Sopotiuk.
“While many think it may be relatively simple for UMSU to implement an online voting system, there are a lot of pros and cons that UMSU would need to consider first. [ . . . ] The convenience of voting from any Internet-connected computer is obvious but the potential benefit from this needs to be considered against the consequences.”
Online voting systems have been used by student unions in a number of other universities around the world, including University of British Columbia and the University of Manchester.
At UBC, online voting is encouraged, although traditional paper ballots do become available on the last day of the election. The student council of UBC, the Alma Mater Society (AMS), does not hire out an independent company to facilitate the election but instead uses a university-administered site called WebVote to operate the online portion of the election.
AMS president Michael Duncan noted that while both options are available, most students at the UBC prefer the WebVote system in elections.
“[WebVote] just makes voting a lot easier and although we do have both methods, we find that a majority of students like to vote online, from their home, or wherever else they are, said Duncan.
Duncan said he does not know of any election where online security has been an issue for the AMS. He pointed out that the paper balloting is available to those students who “can’t get access or don’t feel comfortable voting online.”
At the University of Manchester, the new student government has hired an online voting website to host a student election later this month.
According to Chris Jenkinson, the academic affairs officer of the University of Manchester Students’ Union, online voting is an efficient way to get more students involved in the decision-making process at the university and allows students who live or study away from campus to participate in the voting process. He said the system facilitates student voting rather than restricting it.
“If students can’t make it to the ballot box, we have to bring the ballot box to them,” Jenkinson said.
According to Jenkinson, there were concerns regarding the protection of students’ personal information required for online voting.
Jenkinson said he believes these issues have now been resolved, and looks forward to a hassle-free election."

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What are your opinions on the UBC system Andrew? I'm assuming that it must have been your ideal scenario/example(being a university in Canada) as far as this issue goes.
Thanks!

It sounds intriguing, but a few problems I just thought of:

1) I know people will still be concerned about voters being either pressured to vote in libraries etc, or people will get their friends to log them in and someone on the campaign team in question will vote in their stead. It's probably the most common argument I hear against using the internet rather than internal servers.

I frankly would love to visit some of the returning officers from these universities and ask if they have this problem, and if so, how they deal with it or if it's just a concern we're making up in our heads during the thought process.

2) BigPulse requires electronic input of elector information. The MSU actually doesn't have an electronic copy of eligible voters and during each election cycle we have to specially request a physical copy of eligible students from the registrar and we're expected to destroy the lists after the election because of privacy concerns. We can always ask the registrar if a compatible electronic version exists, but they might not give it up to us because of strict Ontario privacy laws (we've run into this problem a few times for other services like the Marmor and whatnot, it's a pain and it really does happen)

I can always forward this suggestion along too. The more options we have to look at, the better our choice in the end will hopefully be! Keep the suggestions rollin' if you got'em

*cough* As someone who was campaigning in MUSC, I can confidently say that no one around me campaigning 'harrassed' anyone or shouted things, we stood there to remain visible to voters and to answer any questions they might have, it was actually a really effective method of election/campaign awareness advertising and a way of interacting with constituents. I know I found it to be very enlightening.

ohh *akward* well I guess there was nothing "technically" wrong with doing that as long as your intentions were too increase visibility/"answer" questions, but I don't remember exactly did hear from the CRO/DRO and a floater or two that the MUSC admin was complaining. But I guess I'm far too much about principles, for me a voter should have his mind made up before coming out to vote after carefully looking at and weighing up all platforms, for me convincing passerby's to vote is earning a blind vote. Very RARELY would someone who wasn't initially going to vote have any knowledge of what the SRA or how valid is the campaigners platform thrown onto him in 10-15 seconds, it would probably be a courtesy vote.

Yeah, MUSC Admin got a tad touchy because we were 'in vendor space' and hadn't paid the 250$ a day to stand in the MUSC atrium.

It's great to see students ask questions like these. It shows that you're interested in learning about what goes on at McMaster and the MSU.

With regards to the courseware some professors have concerns that we are trying to show shouldn't be concerns. For example, many are so used and stuck in their ways with Titles that they won't change out of fear it won't work out - yet all the profs that have used it so far are quite happy. Others are worried people won't find their books since if the Underground prints it, it won't be held at titles - and they want all of their books together so it's easy for students.

So really, we're just trying to lobby the professors to change their minds and work with the Underground instead. The more profs we get, the more it gets passed around by word of mouth and the more successful it will be. It takes time to establish something like this - but we're trying!