The Associated Students Inc. online election has so far experienced one mishap while attempting to garner more student votes through an online ballot.
Cal State Long Beach students that checked their e-mail after 6 p.m. Sunday would have found an accessible link to vote in the ASI election — a link which should not have been available until Monday morning.
“That was a mistake,” said Kimberlyn Luong, who is ASI’s government elections officer.
The issue is being cited as a “programming error on ASI’s part,” according to an ASI media advisory sent to the Daily Forty-Niner at 2:45 p.m. on Tuesday.
A Board of Elections meeting was held at 5 p.m. on Monday to discuss the error.
Luong wrote in an e-mail that the board of elections “decided to move up the date of the voting, so all votes that were made Sunday will be counted.”
The advisory noted that students who voted on Sunday were able to vote again once the official voting period began at 12:01 a.m. on Monday. “However, the second votes cast will simply overwrite the first ones, and the first votes will be erased,” the advisory states.
Those who voted on Sunday and did not vote again will still have their votes counted.
The advisory also states that ASI “apologizes for any inconvenience or unease this error has caused” and advises students to contact ASI at [email protected] if they have any questions.
As of 4 p.m. Monday, 1,700 students had voted, according to Luong. Of these, 17 votes were cast Sunday.
Assistant Director of Student Involvement and Leadership Kim Hinckson said they will “not be going back until Thursday morning” to get an updated number on how many students have voted. She said ASI only checked Monday on the numbers to sort out Sunday’s setback.
Thumb drives were offered for the first 500 students who cast their votes and brought their voting verification sheets to the ASI office located on the third floor of the University Student Union. Around 200 thumb drives were still available as of 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday.
During CSULB’s first online ASI election last year approximately 11.5 percent of the student body — or 4,346 students — voted in the 2008 ASI elections. This marked a more than 55 percent increase compared to 2007, according to an April 26, 2008 article in the Daily Forty-Niner.
Check back later for updates on ASI elections at www.daily49er.wpengine.com, the definitive source for CSULB news.
This story was last updated at 12:19 a.m., Wednesday, April 14, 2009.