EVP election begins online today

  CHRIS BACKLEY Evan Okamura, who is
running for USAC external vice president, speaks with fourth-year
history student Emily Peterson Wednesday.

By Sarah Lazur
Daily Bruin Contributor

Voting for the external vice president of the Undergraduate
Students Association Council will take place today and Friday.

This is the first time elections will be held online at
UCLA.

Election Board New advisor Mike Cohn believes an online election
is best for filling the EVP vacancy because of its financial
advantage. Holding the election online will cost approximately
$150, rather than the $10,000 required for a paper ballot
election.

“I’m excited that it’s another very
cost-effective opportunity, and I am extremely confident that it is
a secure system and it will be effective,” Cohn said.

Candidates for EVP ““ who serves as a liaison between USAC
and off-campus groups ““ are Evan Okamura, a third-year
political science and Asian American Studies student; and Susan M.
Sheybani, a fifth-year political science transfer student.

The online election will take place from noon today until noon
Friday. Students can vote by logging onto their My.UCLA Web
page at any time during the voting period.

Since Wednesday, candidate statements were available online on a
link from students’ personal My.UCLA pages. During the voting
period, students can access the ballot from a link on the page.

No computer glitches should arise, according to Cohn, and the
online voting process will be accurate. The server should be able
to handle the influx of users during the voting period, he
said.

“It was a smart move considering the time frame,”
Cohn said. “It’s very secure and My.UCLA can
accommodate every student who will desire to vote so there
shouldn’t be a problem at all.”

This election will test the online voting process, said E-Board
Chair Alex Kaplan.

“There’s a lot of questions that can only be
answered by trying it out,” Kaplan said. “UCSD has
online elections and it gives them high voter turnout.”

But Kaplan doesn’t expect an especially high voter turnout
because online voting is a new concept at UCLA and the election
came with short notice and little publicity.

Despite the advantages of online voting, Cohn says there’s
no guarantee it will take the place of traditional elections.

“This is a perfect opportunity to take advantage of some
of the technology we have here on campus,” he said.
“This is a trial basis for the special election.”

Not all council members shared Cohn’s and Kaplan’s
enthusiasm. Internal Vice President Elias Enciso and Financial
Supports Commissioner Cynthia Rabuy voted against approving the
online election calendar and campaign budgets at last week’s
USAC meeting.

Both Enciso and Rabuy said the council’s decision to allow
students to vote from off-campus computers presents serious
problems.

“I was really concerned about people who were really
apathetic or just didn’t care about the EVP position and were
only going to go vote because their friends told them to,”
Enciso said, adding that candidates could have parties where they
pressure students to vote for them.

Kaplan disagreed that peer pressure would affect the outcome any
more than in a traditional election and cited the five-minute delay
between votes from the same computer as a deterrent to mass
voting.

“I wouldn’t say that in this fashion it’s more
of a concern than during the old system,” Kaplan said.
“Under the old system there’s nothing stopping you from
having a “˜vote for my friend’ party.”

The online election would have been appropriate, Rabuy said, had
USAC restricted voting to on-campus computers as in the
council’s original plan.

“Ideally we would have been able to vote from certain
parts of campus and that’s it,” she said. “It
wasn’t the actual election that I was against, it was that
there was a better way to do it.”