Election faces technical problems

Though it wasn’t a warm, sunshiny day Thursday, Pitt seemed like Florida when election… Though it wasn’t a warm, sunshiny day Thursday, Pitt seemed like Florida when election problems caused difficulties for some students who wanted to vote for Student Government Board members and president.

Voting this year was being done on a new scanner system, which Panther Central said was ready for use, according to SGB Elections Chair Jeff Alex. But by 9 a.m., problems were being reported. About 1,000 students were not registered into the system, so any of those people who tried to vote had their ID cards denied.

There were 102 students who tried to vote and had their cards denied by the system. About 50 of them had not voted by the time the system’s flaws had been fixed, Alex said.

Before voting, non-College of General Studies undergraduates had to swipe their IDs.

If a student had not voted yet, the ID scanner should have approved the ID and the student should then have been allowed into the voting booth.

However, some off-campus students’ IDs were not registered into the system, and the scanner screen said the IDs were invalid.

Presidential candidate Pat Creighton blamed much of the problem on Alex, saying he should have had any problems with the polls taken care of before election day.

But according to Alex, the problem was taken care of.

Students who could not vote could either call Panther Central and have their names put into the system, or go to Panther Central to get a time-stamped sheet verifying their student status. After getting the sheet, the student had five minutes to vote only in the Litchfield Towers lobby. The time limit made it impossible for students to make copies of the sheets and cause further complications.

Voting students had to sign a sheet of paper. Before the students who received the time-stamped paper could vote, SGB member Brandy Blasko – who was working at the Towers voting location – had to check the signatures to make sure students were not voting more than once, Alex added. This continued until about 3 p.m., when the system’s data had been updated to include the missing student names.

Then the ID numbers of the students who used the stamped-paper system were put into the system manually so that they could not vote again.

Creighton, however, said the stamped-paper system was “shady.”

“I don’t know what to do about it,” he said. “I could have voted three times [with the stamped-paper system] if I was some average Joe that she [Blasko] didn’t know.”

Alex said the system would not allow for students to vote multiple times because Blasko would be checking the sign-in sheet.

Creighton was also concerned that Blasko was the only one checking the paperwork.

At about 2 p.m., he said he was losing votes because of the complications and worried it would affect the results.

“If I lose by 30 votes or so – I’m going to be jacked,” he said.

According to Creighton, some Greeks – including some of his friends – who wanted to vote could not. He added that many of his friends live off campus and might have been affected by the problems.

Presidential candidate Liz Culliton said she had concerns about the problem because voter turnout is normally low and the problems made it harder for those who wanted to vote. Getting students to wait in line or to come back to vote later in the day could affect the results, she said.

Andrea DeChellis, a presidential candidate, said she hoped the problem did not deter people from voting.

SGB candidate Matt Carmody said he could not blame the problem on anyone because it was the machines’ fault.

At Schenley Cafe by about 2:45 p.m., 17 students had been sent to Panther Central while 172 had voted there. Michelle Bloss, who was working at the polls there, said they had encountered problems when they needed to swipe several cards consecutively or when there were any scratches on the magnetic stripe of the IDs.

Jeff Knox, who was also working at Schenley, said, “It sucks for people who vote all the way down here, and they have to go all the way up to Panther Central. Most of them don’t vote then.”

The election process had more trouble when a power generator in McCormick Hall went down, setting off a security alert and causing the voting system in Towers lobby to go down.

ID scanners in the Marketplace and Eddie’s also went down at that time, according to Culliton.

Despite all of the problems, SGB President Kevin Washo Jr., said he expected voter turnout to be similar to other years, with 1,800 to 1,900 votes cast.

“Even though the glitches have come up, it is still not hindering the number of votes in an average year,” he said.

According to Alex, there were 1,350 to 1,360 votes cast by about 3 p.m. and 2,185 were cast total.

Senior staff writer Christian Schoening also contributed to this article.