USG elections process under question

Currently, certain USG members have the ability to view the list of students who have cast ballots, and there is a chance that they could exploit this ability by altering the results of the election without leaving a trace, said James Chu, a senior systems developer in the Office of Information Technology (OIT). Chu was the original designer of the WebSurvey facility used in the elections process.

“Both as past senior elections manager and president, I take these issues very seriously, and I think we need to look at fixing [the system] as soon as possible,” Weinstein said.

Under the current election framework, the USG creates a survey using the WebSurvey facility and then deploys that survey as an election, Chu explained. When the polls close, an authorized USG member logs onto the WebSurvey facility and converts the survey results to a format that can easily be processed by the Registrar. The USG webmaster then sends the results to the Registrar, who certifies them and notifies the USG of the results.

USG members who have access to the system use the NetID “usgvote” to log on, at which point the individual “can actually delete survey responses or votes from the system,” Chu said, explaining that these USG members can see the list of students who have voted but not the candidates they selected.

Chu said it is unlikely that USG members have other mechanisms to manipulate votes, such as adding fake votes. “The election surveys are configured to require NetID authentication, and so the NetID ‘usgvote’ would not be able to input fake votes,” Chu said.

USG webmaster Bruce Halperin ’09 and senior elections manager Braeden Kepner-Kraus ’10 have had access to election results in the past. Weinstein said that Halperin has been responsible for creating the online survey that is then deployed as an election.

Halperin did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Kepner-Kraus also could not be reached for comment.

Weinstein said that he plans to work with OIT to modify the online elections system prior to the December USG elections so that neither the USG webmaster nor the elections managers will be able to delete ballots.

“I will be in contact with OIT to see what needs to be done in the backend system to make it less vulnerable to foul play,” he said. “We are definitely moving in the direction of continually improving the elections process, and this is probably the next improvement that we can make to ensure equitability and fairness in the USG elections.”

Though Chu created the vote-counting system as it exists today, he said he would have no objections if the Registrar or USG adopted a replacement system. It may be a relatively easy fix to improve the security of the system by limiting the privileges of the USG administrator, he noted.

“Technically, it would not be difficult to add extra code so that the NetID ‘usgvote’ would not have access to the votes before they are counted,” he explained.

Chu said he designed the WebSurvey facility to conduct surveys, not to operate as an election platform. He added that he worked with the Registrar and the USG to allow the USG to use the platform for elections, which it has done for the last six years.

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“The Registrar wanted a way to automate the system, and so I worked with them to streamline the system,” Chu said.

The last two elections under the current USG administration have been plagued by delays.

In this year’s freshman class election, there were several technical errors during the recording and counting processes, Kepner-Kraus said in an interview last month. Revisions to the Point website caused problems with the election results stored on that server, he explained, and the data had to be transferred to a different server. Later, Halperin forgot to send in the XML file recording the votes, Kepner-Kraus explained, and when the Registrar received the file, it had not been properly formatted.

Likewise, in April, the release of the results of the U-councilor elections was delayed after Halperin changed the scripting language used to create the online ballot. As a result of the change, the Registrar was not able to verify the election results on time.

Kepner-Kraus said last spring that he was unaware Halperin had made the change and did not know why it was made.

Weinstein added that Halperin was temporarily suspended from his position as webmaster during the December 2007 USG election because Halperin was running for Class of 2009 senator. Weinstein explained that the password for the elections platform was changed to ensure that access was closed.