Grad students denied votes in first day of IUSA elections

About 10,000 student voices were missing from the first day of voting in this year’s IU Student Association elections. \nMany graduate students who tried to vote Tuesday were denied access to the computer voting system, receiving a message that said “you are not a registered voter.” No student is required to register before voting.\n“After some research, it was determined that there had been an incomplete data load of some 7697 student records,” said Barry Walsh, IU associate vice president for enterprise software, in an e-mail. “Most of the students who were affected were graduate students.”\nSarah McDonough, IUSA elections commissioner, said she is optimistic that every one will be able to vote tomorrow.\n“Hopefully now that UITS has seen that we’ve had a problem, they’ll pay special attention to our voting site,” she said. \nStudents were given the option of voting by e-mailing their votes to a Gmail account. However, David White, the presidential candidate for the INdiana ticket, said he was worried students might give up on the complicated processes and not try again. He said he was pleased with McDonough’s speed in addressing the issue.\nMcDonough hopes all affected students will be able to vote today, but is not closed to the possibility of extending the designated election time if an extension is deemed necessary.\n“We’re running as fair of an election as we can,” said Rhett Tanselle, an IUSA elections committee member. \nWhite hopes students will not be discouraged by the glitch and will try to vote again.\n“I hope that graduate students who got that message today get tomorrow’s message,” White said, “and please vote.”\nAfter hearing from about 50 students in the Law School, White took it upon himself to stop focusing on his campaign and to start trying to fix \nthe problem.\n“We want IUSA to be a legitimate student body,” he said. \nWhite said he is now confident that all students will be able to vote.\n“If they cannot (vote), contact the INdiana ticket (and) we will get the right people on it,” he said. “If you cannot vote, tell someone – I will personally look into every case. I was very concerned about this. I spent my entire day on this. I’ll fight for everybody.”\nStudents can vote on the IUSA Web site at www.indiana.edu/~iusa. Polls close at 10 p.m. today.