The results of the AMS executive and the Undergraduate Student Trustee elections have been delayed until 10 a.m. Thursday morning due to an issue with the preferential balloting system.
According to Caleigh Simpson, AMS chief electoral officer, the AMS needs the raw data of the results to obtain an accurate representation of the voting.
Problems occurred because VoteNet provided only the ballot points. The preferential results were supposed to be inputted manually, but weren’t.
The AMS elections team has been waiting since 8 p.m. Wednesday night in an effort to obtain this information.
A representative from each AMS executive and undergraduate trustee team were called in to the AMS offices to scrutinize the process.
“[VoteNet] is not open in the evening, so what we have done is place a bunch of emergency calls and emails to them. They’ve responded to us but they haven’t given us a solution yet,” Simpson said. “As the CEO, I’ve made the decision to not release election results tonight as I do not have them.”
The elections team hopes to speak with a VoteNet engineer in the morning.
This is the second year that the AMS has used preferential voting with the VoteNet online provider.
The issue was discovered midday today. Candidates were notified after voting had ended at 8 p.m. in an effort to not deter students from voting.
“I guess we just had a bit of a miscommunication in a way in terms of how VoteNet works with preferential balloting,” Simpson told the Journal.
Although there were three teams running in last year’s executive election, the issue had been caught and a “solution” had been applied, Simpson said.
“The solution that was put in place by last year’s team has to be applied to this year’s team,” she said. “We thought the VoteNet system was able to do a VoteNet function for us that it in fact isn’t.”
For updates, see queensjournal.ca
– With files from Nick Faris
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