Ballots Possibly Lost Through Email Forwarding

By Connect Mason Reporter Rachael Dickson

Concerns were raised today by some candidates for student body president and vice president regarding the process by which students were given the ballot to vote.

• Double-check your official Mason e-mail accounts if you are missing your presidential ballot.

“The original concern was that some students who choose to forward their e-mail to Gmail have not received the e-mail in question, the Student Government ballot,” vice-presidential candidate Ravi Udeshi said. “When [Presidential Candidate Nicole Kukuruda and I] encouraged people to go and vote, numerous individuals told us that they haven’t gotten the ballot. We’ve since learned that some of the people who forward their e-mail are the ones not getting it.”

Jude Butch, assistant director of student governance in Student Activities, said that Mason uses a program developed by Student Voice, a company which designs assessment software for institutions of higher education, to conduct the elections.

“This is the third year in a row that Student Government elections have been done using Student Voice software and there has never been a reported problem with
the delivery system of ballots to students' email accounts,” Butch said. “I highly highly doubt that there is validity to these claims.”

Butch contacted a representative of Student Voice, who looked further into these concerns. The company confirmed that forwarding software had already been taken into consideration with the program.

“I do know that the e-mails went out because we’ve been getting lots of votes,” Butch said. “It’s not on Student Voice or on [Student Government] if students aren’t able to vote because we’re doing everything in our power to give them that ability.”

“I don’t know what the issue is - but I encourage students to go check their gmu.edu account and vote,” Udeshi said.