Princeton Undergraduate Student Government

In light of the frequent difficulties with previous elections, the USG has conducted an audit of all previous elections back through 2002. During this audit, an error was discovered in the class of 2012 senate election that took place this winter. The error caused votes cast for candidates Andreas Sakellaris and Michael Yaroshefsky to be disregarded when generating the final tally. OIT, who is responsible for the elections system currently used by the USG, confirmed that the algorithm that tallies votes had indeed malfunctioned. The original results processed by the system indicated that Julie Chang and Rebecca Lee were the top vote getters. After OIT corrected the malfunction, the system showed that Michael Yaroshefsky and Julie Chang had actually been the top two vote getters in that election.

Following this discovery, all involved parties were privately notified of the error. Michael Yaroshefsky could have accepted position as class of 2012 senator to which he was elected. However, he declined to accept this position, instead choosing to continue serving as IT Chair for the USG.  One of the two positions of class of 2012 senator is now vacant and will be filled according to the constitutionally-prescribed appointment process. 

The following information was released on Thursday, May 7th to the Daily Princetonian by Cass Cliatt, the Princeton University Director of Media Relations:

1.  What went wrong with counting the votes for the USG referendum 1?

The issue with vote counts was with Referendum 1, but it affected all four questions in that referendum. No candidate elections were affected, but we’ve seen the same error in previous voting on USG referendum questions and are working to address this. What occurred was that the program that counts votes expected the assigned selection by each voter to be in ascending order, but the reverse was the case. So, while the program expected that a value of 1 in a yes-no question would be yes, in actuality the value was supposed to mean no. The value 2 meant yes and 1 meant no.

The other issue is that, in typical circumstances, zero is not provided as a value in such voting. So, typically, if a zero appears, the program reads it as the voter opting not to make a selection. A zero typically is read as a non-choice, and the program assumes the voter bypassed the question. This led to an incorrect reporting of the results, which was later discovered by OIT and reported to the USG’s elections manager. Unfortunately, the problem wasn’t discovered until after the original results had been provided to the USG and publicized.

After the problem was discovered, OIT's technician responsible for the application went into the database and changed all existing 1 values to 2 for all four parts of Referendum 1, then all zero values to 1. These results will be now be recertified by the Office of the Registrar, which is the standard protocol for the results.

2. How were the results affected?

The results originally reported were in error. OIT found that some of the resulting values may not have been as intended by the voters, and administrators in OIT expressed deep regrets to the USG. The problem really demonstrates the need to have an updated and thoroughly tested election process in place for future elections, which has been the subject of continuing talks between OIT and the USG. And in fact, progress is being made on this front.

3.  How will the problem be resolved?

Again, OIT’s technician has gone into the system and adjusted the program to correctly count the votes, and now is working with the Office of the Registrar to recertify all the results. The correct results will be reported to the USG elections manager as early as Monday. In addition, OIT and USG are working together on designing new elections software in a project sponsored by the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students. The goal is to eliminate any possibility of a similar problem arising in the future and to ensure a secure system.

The results for the 2009 USG Spring Elections have been certified.  Congratulations to all winners!

The results are presented including vote counts in the following PDF files:

• Class Government Results
  • Class of 2012 Run-Off Results (New)
    
• U-Council Results
• Referenda Results (results for Referendum I are incorrect; see below)
  • Corrected Results for Referendum I
  • Free Response Answers

This article clarifies the voting tabulation of Referendums IV and V.