Elections Could Leave Legacy

After a protracted and confusing series of mishaps that delayed elections for two days last week, voting in the 2002 Undergraduate Council general elections finally ended on Saturday at noon.

But the results of the elections will likely go beyond just the new roster of members, as the council grapples with questions about electoral procedures and timing.

Some members have even indicated that the commotion surrounding this fall’s elections may precipitate changes to the council’s rules.

The council announced the official results on Saturday afternoon, and the top three vote-getters from each House and first-year district, as well as the top candidate from Dudley House, received seats on the council.

In most Houses, incumbents running for reelection were successful in their bids. In fact, Rohit Chopra ’04, chair of the council’s Student Affairs Committee, garnered 100 first-place votes in his successful reelection bid in Adams House—the most number-one ballots of any candidate in this fall’s elections.

“I didn’t poster. I didn’t really go door-to-door,” he said. “I just made sure that I let my friends know I was running.”

Even so, he surpassed the candidate with the next-most first-place votes—Aaron D. Chadbourne ’06, of the North Yard, who received 75 number-one nods.

At the other end of the spectrum, Dudley House elected Ari Z. Weisbard ’02 with only four votes, and Joshua A. Barro ’05 will join the council as a representative from Adams House despite receiving only nine first-place votes.

Though incumbents usually fare well, some of last year’s council members lost their bids for reelection, including Gregory R. Friedman ’04, former chair of the council’s Finance Committee.

“I campaigned the same as I did last year,” he said. “Leverett was just much more competitive this year.”

Turnout Down-turn

Despite the numerous delays in getting the elections started, council leaders said as voting got underway last Friday that they hoped to settle on a system that would actually increase voter turnout.

The council sent students personalized e-mails with links to a non-Harvard website where they could vote.

“We’re very curious about how this will affect voter turnout,” council President Sujean S. Lee ’03 said last week after the e-mail voting system was repeatedly delayed by technological problems and administrative concerns regarding the security of sensitive registrar’s information.

“The Undergraduate Council is very apologetic for confusing students,” she added. “We’re thinking that this will compensate for it.”

But voter turnout actually declined relative to last year.

This year 2,295 students voted, David I. Monteiro ’04, who sits on the council’s Election Commission, said at the council’s meeting Sunday night.

That marks a nearly 150-vote decrease from last year’s turnout.

“The system we used this year, as you know, caused some confusion,” Monteiro said.

Last week, Associate Dean of the College David P. Illingworth ’71, who had told the council that its initial plans for Web-based voting did not pass administrative muster, said he shared many students’ puzzlement about the elections.

“A few times during this process, I was thinking, ‘Florida, Florida, Florida,’” he said.

But Lee said the decline in turnout did not represent a significant drop.

“I think this year’s turnout was comparable to last year’s,” she said. “Everyone got an e-mail, which we thought would increase turnout, in addition to the natural publicity we got because of the Crimson coverage.”

Though Lee said she thought this year’s voting system was successful, she noted the system would not be used again in the future.

“Elections will not be held via e-mail, so people will not be spammed every election,” she said at Sunday’s council meeting.

Constitutional Questions

This fall council leaders appeared to bend the rules laid out for elections in the organization’s bylaws and constitution, which has led the group’s parliamentarian to say the council may need to revise the rules that govern its elections.

The problems started with the formation of the Election Commission, the six-member panel that oversaw the general elections. The council’s bylaws stipulate that each year the commission begin its term in April and become “responsible for running the upcoming general elections in the fall.”

The bylaws specifically hold the commission responsible for “coordinating election procedures with the appropriate parties necessary to carry out electronic voting.”

But the election commission that presided over this year’s general elections was named on Sept. 23—only one week before the elections were scheduled to begin.

“The fall elections are extremely straightforward,” Lee explained last week. “They don’t require any extensive planning.”

But Illingworth and Jared S. Morgenstern ’03, the council’s technology coordinator, who designed the voting system, said the new protocol entailed much preparation by the administration and the council.

“We started working on this in June,” Morgenstern said last week. “We interfaced with the College early on.”

That meant the council planned elections for more than four months with no oversight from the Election Commission.

Another problem arose with the timing of the election. The bylaws require general elections each fall to occur two weeks after upper-class registration over a three-day period from Wednesday to Friday.

But technological and administrative difficulties meant this provision went by the wayside.

In the midst of last week’s delays, Lee said the rule could be disregarded because “the Constitution doesn’t take into account the new system.”

Last week, she said she received the approval she needed before proceeding with the new timetable.

“I spoke to the Executive Board and Election Commission about this,” she said.

But Election Commission chair Nancy A. Redd ’03 said last week, “she didn’t talk to the Election Commission about it.”

Lee responded by citing a provision in the constitution allowing her to establish “temporary standing rules.”

According to the constitution, “such rulings are subject to full Council veto, in the form of a majority vote.”

Since the council cannot meet until after elections, though, few checks—if any—existed on Lee and the Executive Board during the election delays.

P.K. Agarwalla ’04, the council’s parliamentarian, said that because of what happened during the election, the standing rules provision is “something that’s on my agenda.”

He noted that, under the current constitution, Lee can invoke her right to create temporary standing rules, although he said changes may be made to the bylaws and constitution in the upcoming year.

“In the next few weeks, you’ll see a lot of things coming through,” he said.

He added that interpretation of the council constitution and bylaws often varies from one case to the next.

“It’s just like the real Constitution,” he said. “You’ve got strict and loose constructionism.”

Mystery Candidate

When the Election Commission certified the results on Saturday, two names had asterisks beside them.

The commission certified three winners in Currier House—including who had won the most votes—but did not finalize which of the victorious candidates finished second and third. The council uses the placement of winners within a House to determine the seating of representatives on committees.

The Election Commission’s Monteiro said that certification was delayed because of a ballot confusion.

“A candidate whose name was not on our list of candidates unintentionally appeared on the ballot,” he said, though he declined to name the candidate.

Morgenstern, who as technology coordinator designed the voting system and on-line ballots, appeared on the Currier House slate—even though he was not named by the Election Commission as an official candidate.

Morgenstern declined to comment.

“We didn’t take any specific action,” Monteiro said. “We certainly didn’t take any disciplinary action.”

Members Listed

In the elections, 49 representatives were elected.

This year’s representatives are, from Adams House, Chopra, Luke R. Long ’03 and Barro; from Cabot House, Vedran Lekic ’04, Bolek Z. Kabala ’03 and Jason L. Lurie ’05; from Currier House, Jessica R. Stannard-Friel ’03, Jane Kim ’05 and Brian C. Grech ’03; from Dudley House, Weisbard; from Dunster House, Agarwalla, Andrew C. Crocco ’03 and James T. Berylson ’04; from Eliot House, Michael R. Blickstead ’05, Sheila R. Adams ’05 and Amanda E. Kowalski ’03; and from Kirkland House, Matthew W. Mahan ’05, Michael S. Ovadia ’03 and Mary Ellen R. Player ’04.

Also elected were Shira S. Simon ’04, Christopher M. Hill ’05 and Fred O. Smith ’04 of Leverett House; James C. Coleman ’03, Rachelle K. Gould ’03 and Swarna J. Srinivas ’05 of Lowell House; Eric J. Powell ’03, Alexander B. Patterson ’03 and Colin S. Kelly ’05 of Mather House; Melissa A. Eccleston ’04, Jared M. Gross ’03 and Justin R. Chapa ’05 of Pforzheimer House; Jessica P. Lau ’03, Rory S. Donald ’04 and Yusuf W. Randera-Rees ’05 of Quincy House; and Blake J. Boulerice ’04, Thomas J. Mucha ’03 and John S. Kwaak ’05 of Winthrop House.

The first-year representatives are Matthew J. Glazer ’06, Zhijie Xue ’06 and Ian W. Nichols ’06 of East Yard; Wesley H. Kauble ’06, Christina L. Adams ’06 and Neil K. Mehta ’06 of South Yard; Chadbourne, John P. McCambridge ’06 and Deborah Hsieh ’06 of North Yard; and Jonathan D. Einkauf ’06, Sungmi A. Choi ’06 and Thomas J. Wright ’06.

—Staff writer Alexander J. Blenkinsopp can be reached at blenkins@fas.harvard.edu.