Ballots invlidated
Campus Times
November 8, 1996
by Andrea Gardner
Arts & Entertainment Editor
The 131 Homecoming king and queen ballots cast Monday, Nov. 4, were declared
invalid after a conflict in voting numbers was found.
"It was brought to our attention that there might be a discrepancy
in the number of votes cast in comparison to the ones that were on our list.
We checked that and the numbers did not match up and since there was a suspicion
that the elections might have been tampered with, we went ahead and cancelled
the votes for that day, just to be safe and to be fair to everyone,"
said Associated Students Federation (ASF) Forum Vice President Dan Lougheed,
a junior.
According to Lougheed, 12 ballots were unaccounted for. This left ASF members
uncertain if foul play or a mistake in recording caused the inaccurate numbers.
"We're not 100 percent sure that anybody stuffed the box at all; that
could just be our error in crossing people off," said Lougheed of the
method ASF uses in counting voters.
In the weekly ASF meeting on Wednesday, senior Jose Barba told the Forum,
"The only way that could have happened is with someone here."
In correcting the problem ASF advised members working at the voting table
to work in groups of two and to keep watch over voters, accounting each
ballot more carefully.
Students who voted on Monday were notified to recast their ballots via mail
messages.