Voting underway, turnout up so far
Primary elections for next year’s Utah State University student government officers are underway, and already elections coordinators say voter turnout has increased significantly since last year.
Associated Students of USU Public Relations Vice President Marni Jenkins said that by Thursday afternoon, the number of votes cast had already surpassed last year’s primary elections totals.
Voting began Thursday at 8 a.m. and will last until today at 4 p.m. Jenkins said she sees a number of possible reasons for the increased turnout.
She said the biggest factor is probably the number of candidates. This year, 20 more people are running for office than did last year, she said.
“I think [the candidates] really are working hard to get out there and tell people not only to vote for them, but just to vote,” Jenkins said.
She said the election process has been smooth for the most part, although many students have experienced trouble accessing their online ballot – a problem Jenkins said is related to increased security measures taken by elections organizers this year.
She said voting, which is being conducted entirely online this year, was made more secure this year after last year’s concern about students hacking into elections databases.
Encryption requirements for browser software was increased to 128 bits.
“It just makes your information on a secure server,” she said.
Jenkins said she received several complaints about the issue, but now there is information on the elections page explaining what voters can do if they receive an error message related to encryption.
She said there are two options for voters whose computers won’t support the higher encryption: Students can either upgrade their encryption level or go to an on-campus computer installed by Computer Services.
She said she has also received some complaints about campaigning styles of various candidates, but those complaints come in every year and are no more significant this year than previous years.
She said the most commonly broken rule is that campaigners must give any duplicated campaign materials to voters directly by hand.
Duplicated materials include flyers, stickers, props, buttons, shirts and any other similar materials.
Campaigners can’t leave such materials on people’s doors or cars, stick stickers on people as they walk by or otherwise give out the material unless it’s directly handed to a voter.
Jenkins said complaints about campaign violations can be e-mailed to asusupr@cc.usu.edu.