Voting officially begins at 9 a.m. today for the annual spring elections, as students head to the polls to elect a variety of leaders for the 1997-98 academic year -- though the marquee leadership positions at stake are Student Assembly president and vice president.
This is the second year on-line voting will be used. Students can vote by using their World Wide Web browser and going to the election Internet site at http://www.dartmouth.edu/projects/election.
Students can vote from their own computers or one of several computers set up in the Collis Center.
Ballots will be accepted on-line from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. today and from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. tomorrow.
Also up for grabs in today's and tomorrow's elections are: Assembly at-large members; class council presidents and vice presidents for the Class of 1998, 1999 and 2000; and members of the Green Key Society and the Committee On Standards.
Last year's student elections were the first to be held on-line. Previously, student votes were cast on paper ballots which were counted by hand. The manual tabulation of votes often continued the night after the election until as late at 2:30 a.m.
On-line voting now allows votes to be tabulated instantly.
There has been no significant difference in the number of students voting since the elections went on-line. Voter turnout for spring elections has held steady at 1,600 or 1,700 for the last three years.
Michael Pryor '98, who wrote the script for the election program and designed the voting website, said there are two important changes in the process this year.
All the votes will be stored in a more powerful data base that will tally all the votes at the end of the election period "in two seconds," he said. He added this is the same data base system used for much of the College's administrative work.
Newly released software named KClient will expedite and safeguard the voting process, Pryor said.
Whereas last year the voting was done on a secure server, KClient software allows a voter to "authenticate [him]self on [his] machine rather than sending it to be identified," Pryor said.
He said members of the Class of 2000 have KClient software on their computers, which enables them to use the new authentication process. Upperclassmen can install KClient on their machines.
Upperclassmen without KClient must fill in their name and BlitzMail password on the online ballot.
"Sending data through the Web is inherently insecure -- that is what the KClient software avoids," Pryor said. "As a security precaution you can change your BlitzMail password, go vote, then change your password back."
Last year, a glitch in the electronic ballot caused votes for Assembly vice president from the Class of 1999 to go unrecorded. All election results from all Assembly races were witheld by the Election Advisory Committee, and a revote took place the next week.
Pryor said last year's electronic mishap was a "fluke," and although unforeseen difficulties could arise this year, he does not think it is likely. "I did the senior executive committee elections [in] the same way and everything went fine," he added.
There will be a reception in the Collis Cafe tomorrow at 9 p.m. for all candidates, and election results will be posted there, EAC Chair and Director of the Collis Center Mark Hoffman said.
