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Online voting rules questioned after ASUNM elections

by Bryan Gibel

Daily Lobo

ASUNM passed election reforms too quickly and didn't set enough guidelines to regulate campaigning in its April election, the chairman of the student government's elections commission said.

"With the implementation of online voting, I think that rules governing the campaigners and the campaign workers were missing completely," Nas Manole said.

The Senate introduced online voting March 21, three weeks before the election.

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ASUNM president-elect Ashley Fate said candidates and campaigners didn't respect voters' privacy and pressured students on

election day.

"Every slate was guilty of walking people up to a computer and saying, 'This is how you vote. Here's my flier. Please vote for us,'" she said. "That's just a blatant infringement on

personal rights, and it defeats the whole purpose of private voting."

REACH, Fate's slate, took the presidency, vice presidency and nine of the 10 contested Senate seats.

No complaints have been filed with the ASUNM Elections Commission, Manole said.

Manole said reforms were passed without enough planning.

"I think the Senate rushed this new election process," he said. "They didn't put in place any rules to limit campaigning in the buildings around campus to make sure people didn't get harassed."

The ASUNM Election Code states that no campaigning is permitted within 25 feet of polling stations.

There were no polling locations, but students were able to vote from any computer with Internet access.

The code for online voting states that candidates cannot use a mobile device, such as a laptop or a cell phone, to solicit votes. It does not regulate campaigning in buildings or computer labs.

Sen. Sebastian Pais Iriart, who ran for vice president on the PAC slate, said candidates were intrusive while soliciting votes.

"Candidates were going to the computer labs and harassing people by putting pressure on them to vote and convincing them who to vote for," he said. "They were often present when students were voting, and they sometimes chose candidates for students who were unsure of who to vote for."

Nick Geyer, an elected senator on the REACH slate, said campaign tactics included changing the homepages of campus computers to make sure students remembered to vote.

"My post was Johnson Center," he said. "I set the homepages in the Athletics Department computing center to the voting Web site."

Geyer said he and other

candidates with REACH also mapped out the campus to target locations with a high level of foot traffic while campaigning.

Despite her slate's landslide win, Fate said she will encourage the Senate to revise the online voting

regulations.

"We need to start putting parameters and rules on the process," she said "Students should be able to have a sanctuary from people who are out campaigning all day."

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