Despite this year’s new interface meant to fix past election ballot issues, students still experienced problems while voting in student government elections this week.

The Elections Board, a subsidiary of Student Government Association (SGA), sent out a University-wide email on Monday afternoon suggesting tips to students who have been having problems completing the election ballot, including slow loading, error messages and ballots that fail to correspond to correct graduation years. The election ballot was sent to all students at midnight on Sunday, and elections will end on April 2 at 11:59 p.m.

Goizueta Business School students received ballots that mistakenly corresponded to their class standing – determined by the number of credit hours taken – instead of their graduation year, according to B-School sophomore and Elections Board RHA Commissioner Bryce Robertson, who is also a sales associate of the Wheel.

This means that students in the class of 2016 in the B-school who qualify for junior standing with their credit hours received the names of class representatives from the class above them. They were asked to vote for representatives not in their graduating class.

Robertson said this year, he coordinated with all the representatives from the divisional councils to ensure that the ballots were set to graduation year instead of class standing. However, he added that the BBA council ballots were mistakenly set to class standing. Still, it is unclear why there are some incorrect ballots for College students, but not others.

While many students outside of the B-school did not have this problem, some students like College junior Lex Gardner reported that they also had incorrect ballots.

“I thought it was disappointing that, with all the issues with elections last year and the creation of the new elections board, there were still issues,” Gardner said. “I am encouraged, however, that the website seems to be working more effectively after the first night. Good thing they extended the voting period to be over a few days [unlike last year].”

In past elections, this problem has existed for the entire student body. These problems persist despite a new interface for electronic ballots that was meant to address the issue. In October, SGA voted to fund the new interface.

According to Robertson, the new system allows Elections Board representatives from each divisional council – which includes the BBA Council and the Graduation Student Government Association (GSGA) – to input the correct ballots for each graduating class in their school.

The ballot each student receives depends on various parameters regarding each student. Depending on one’s academic school, class standing, level of professional or doctoral school, residence hall, netID and graduation year, each student receives an individualized ballot, Robertson said.

“The platform we use is quite good,” College senior and Elections Board Chair Matthew Pesce wrote in an email to the Wheel.

“We asked every division to create their offices on the ballot,” Robertson said. “Each division may not have been as diligent as they could have been.”

He added that there was also a miscommunication with the Oxford SGA. The sophomore representative position on the ballot allowed students to vote for up to eight people instead of the actual number of representatives, which is four.

Similar to the past, students can rectify their incorrect ballots by emailing the Elections Board, whose members can then manually override the system and re-send the student a correct version of their individualized ballot.

The email sent out on Monday afternoon states that students experiencing error messages should clear their browser cache, close the browser and re-enter the ballot address in a new browser window. The email also advises choosing a different browser.

According to Robertson, students have had issues with Google Chrome because the browser is unable to read certain scripts.

He advises that students use a different browser and Emory computers if possible.

According to the email, the ballot has been taking up to a minute and 30 seconds to load.

Robertson said this was due to server overload as a result of the unprecedented voter turnout for this year’s elections.

“We have had unparalleled voter turnout,” Robertson said.

According to him, by 10 a.m., more than 1,400 people had voted. By 5 p.m., that number increased to more than 2,000.

Robertson attributed this year’s turnout to a longer election period as well as a change in the time the email was sent out. Previously, voting has been from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

However, Robertson said that data shows that the best time for the University to ask a question via email is around 10 p.m., when students are most active on their emails.

More students across the divisions know about the elections this year, according to Robertson.

Robertson also said these problems are not likely to occur next year.

“As long as we have people invested enough in the divisions, I don’t anticipate [the problems] happening again next year,” Robertson said.

Robertson said ballot issues until the end of the election period can be rectified by contacting the Elections Boar at ElectionsBoard@emory.edu.

Assistant News Editor Stephen Fowler contributed reporting.

– By Rupsha Basu

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Stephen Fowler 16C is the political reporter at Georgia Public Broadcasting, the statewide NPR affiliate in Georgia. He graduated from Emory with a degree in Interdisciplinary Studies and covered the central administration and Greek Life for the Wheel before serving as assistant news editor, Emory Life editor and the Executive Digital Editor from 2015-16.