TCU elections voided amid alleged corruption

The results of the freshman Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate elections have been voided after members of the Elections Commission (ECOM) deemed the outcome tainted by potential candidate corruption.

ECOM decided to nullify the contest after receiving a complaint just before midnight that several candidates had encouraged their peers to exploit a technological glitch and cast a second ballot.

"The actual substance of the complaint is there were many candidates who were publicly encouraging members of the [community] to vote multiple times," ECOM Chair Adam Weldai, a senior, told the Daily early this morning.

An unidentified ECOM member submitted the allegations, which prompted the rest of ECOM – the student who filed the complaint did not take part in official deliberations – to enter a closed-door hearing shortly after the election wrapped up at midnight.

After the meeting, which lasted approximately one hour, ECOM decided to hold a new election, which will take place on Monday.

The charges stem from a glitch in the voting software, which is sponsored by the outside server Votenet and allegedly allowed freshmen to access a ballot multiple times between midnight and 1:10 a.m. on Wednesday.

Weldai is currently operating under the assumption that even if students logged in twice, only one of their ballots counted.

"They should not have counted more than once," he said. "If the system worked correctly, which we assume it did, every vote counted once."

Still, he was unable to say with certainty that no vote was counted multiple times.

"We have no way of verifying that," he said. "That's why these results should be inconclusive and are being deemed invalid."

Even if the system did not accept more than one vote per student, the candidates' alleged actions have raised ethical concerns.

"Candidates were publicly taking advantage of [the glitch] and encouraging people to vote twice so they would win by unethical methods," Weldai said.

But Weldai said that since the complaint refers to general patterns rather than specific conduct, ECOM will not investigate candidates' actions further.

"There was not a specific person who was named in these complaints," he said.

TCU President Duncan Pickard declined to comment this morning, and TCU Treasurer Matt Shapanka would only say that he supports a clean election.

"I think that as long as ECOM is doing everything they can to ensure a fair election, I think that's what the freshman class deserves," Shapanka said.

Despite the charges, Weldai said that he does not foresee anybody being excluded from running in Monday's contest.

According to Weldai, the alleged corruption was so pervasive that if ECOM were to exclude offenders among the 13 candidates who are vying for seven open seats, there would not be enough left to have a contested election.

"We want to give each and every candidate an equal opportunity and a level playing field to have this specific election be fair and proper," he said.

A Daily investigation this morning turned up some of the Facebook messages in question.

"It seems that, due to an error in the Ecom website, that [sic] we are free to vote again. Please support the candidates," one candidate said in a message to members of a Facebook group supporting general participation in the election.

The candidate, whose name is being withheld since he is only one of several whose actions are coming under scrutiny, told the Daily that it was not his intention to encourage corruption. Instead, he said that he had heard about a voting glitch and wanted to make sure everybody had their ballots counted.

"I was told that there was a voting error and that the votes were somehow not accurate," he said.

His initial message went out at 1:54 p.m., and at 3:01 he rescinded it in a separate message in which he claimed that all votes would only be counted once.

But in another message, this time to a group for his supporters, the candidate was more direct. "Due to a voting error in the Ecom website, we are free to vote a second time, with all the previous ballots still counting. Please vote again!" he said.

Freshman Kate de Klerk, a current senator and a candidate for reelection, expressed surprise at the allegations of corruption. She said she suspects that candidates were not acting with ill intent.

"My feeling is if they were encouraging people to vote more than once, it was to make sure people's votes were actually getting counted," she said.

While rumors spread throughout the day about voting glitches, Weldai said that ECOM never officially told any of the candidates about any problems. As such, he said that all electronic communications to supporters represented unconfirmed suspicions on the part of the candidates.

"There was no public voting error," Weldai said. "Any and all information that these candidates put out in their messages came from these candidates."

While yesterday's controversy threw the freshman contest into turmoil, other classes emerged unscathed since their senators had already been chosen in uncontested elections.

Each class is supposed to have seven senators, but only four current juniors expressed interest in serving next year, so the other three seats dropped down to current sophomores.

As a result, next year there will be 10 junior senators. Since exactly 10 candidates expressed interest, there was no need for an election.

ECOM certified the uncontested elections last week.

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