How will you vote?

Matt Crist

Issue date: 10/12/06 Section: News

With student government elections coming in November, Marshall's Student Body President Ben Sandy faces the challenge of deciding how students will vote.

Marshall University students who participated in the 2005-06 student government election will undoubtedly have last year's voting debacle tattooed in their brains as they submit their votes in this year's election.

"I'm not concerned about voter fraud in this year's elections because we are taking each step necessary to ensure a fair election process," Sandy said. "We are reviewing the current voting process and looking at ways we can avoid voter fraud. If we think that the only way to conduct a fair election is paper ballot, then that is the way we'll have to go."

Sandy said he believes in the eVoter system but some changes need to be made.

In last year's voter fraud scandal many students fell victim to identity theft.

Stephen Hensley, dean of student affairs, said the problem in the last election occurred when dishonest people accessed personal information and used it to log into other people's accounts and cast votes on their behalf.

Students affected by fraud in the 2005-06 elections were those who had never changed their myMU login. By default, Marshall uses a student's date of birth as their login code.

"So if a student had not changed that, and somebody knew their 901 number, they could register on their behalf and that happened a significant number of times," Hensley said. "We don't really know how many, but a lot. So what we have to do is to find a way to make sure that doesn't happen."

"If we had multi-factor identification it would be more difficult to do," Allen Taylor, vice president of information technology and chief technology officer, said. "For instance, if to vote you had to swipe your thumb across a thumbprint reader and type in a password, I doubt there would have been any voter fraud."

On the other hand, the public sometimes reacts negatively to fingerprint requirements, he said.

Many people are resistant to processes that require submitting personal information like a fingerprint, Taylor said.

The Department of Motor Vehicles has made fingerprint filing optional in many states and this practice tends to ease people into the idea of keeping their fingerprint on file elsewhere, he said.

"We need to balance between safety and security and convenience," Hensley said. "Last year, I guess we went too much toward the side of convenience and we didn't protect safety and security."

The result of the 2005-06 election was determined in a second round of voting via paper ballot. Less than half of Marshall students voted a second time.

Hensley said he likes the idea of allowing students to vote online because it increases voter response, but changes have to be made first to prevent fraud.