In light of the Student Information Network’s successful handling of this year’s freshman elections, the Student Assembly is no longer looking into hiring a third party to conduct elections.
p. “No, SIN is fine,” SA President Zach Pilchen ’09 said, when asked how the SA felt about changing to a new election system.
p. The SA began looking for a third party as a reaction to SIN’s loss of some election results last spring. Over the course of two SA meetings prior to this year’s freshman elections, the senate discussed using votenet.com at $2,500 per year.
p. “We put the system under a full test — the freshman elections, and it performed fine. The problems that people attributed to the software weren’t related to the software, but more about who had access to it. The only change that was made was to be sure that the elections software could accept the new student logins that were given to freshmen, and since there is no problem with it, I am very confident that the system will continue to be dependable,” Adam Boltik ’08 said.
p. He added that since the SIN-based election system worked for the freshman elections, the SA did not see any additional benefits from using a hired third party.
p. SIN’s Michael Weissburger ’09 said that SIN and the SA do not interact much. “Zach Pilchen has graciously extended a hand out to SIN, and offered to assist us with some problems we are facing, mostly with flagging membership and interest in the student body for working on SIN. I am happy about that. Other than that, we have little contact with SA,” he said.
