Wrong senator named victor in election

By Richard Nieva

Last Wednesday, freshman Kai Serri was told she didn't get enough votes to secure a seat on the Associated Students senate.

On Thursday, Serri's phone rang while she sat in her emerging leaders class taught by Center for Student Leadership Advisor Jonathan Gray.

Gray saw that the person calling was AS President Austin Woody and decided to pick up the phone for Serri, who watched anxiously as they talked.

"Congratulations, Miss Senator," he finally said, after hanging up.

Due to a technical error, Serri's name was omitted from the results sheet of last Tuesday's election, causing AS to announce the incorrect five senator winners.

Serri came in fifth place, winning the fifth and last seat.

Because Serri was left off the results sheet, the sixth place candidate, Laura MacArthur, was initially notified that she had won the seat.

After AS informed her of the mistake, MacArthur was given a different position serving as a member of the freshman committee under the umbrella of AS.

"I just had fun running," said MacArthur, who added that she would do it again.

Though MacArthur said the situation was unfortunate, she said she has no hard feelings and that it would have been wrong if the right person didn't win.

"It's just something she shouldn't have had to go through," said Woody.

The mistake was due to a coding error on eCampus, causing only 11 of the 12 candidates' names to appear on the sheet when AS printed the results last Wednesday morning.

Woody said that AS's biggest mistake was notifying the top five candidates immediately after receiving the results, and not confirming that all 12 names were on the list.

"There really is no excuse," Woody said. "And I take full responsibility for being at fault."

The election mix-up isn't the first time AS has run into computer voting problems.

In 2005, AS set up voting on SurveyMonkey.com, but the site failed on election day and AS had to switch over to paper ballots. In 2006, AS created a voting system on eCampus that is still in place today.

Last week's error was the first voting problem on the eCampus system.

AS is now working to make sure no counting errors happen again during their next election in the spring, said Woody.

Contact Richard Nieva at rnieva@scu.edu or (408) 554-4546.