The 2014 YFS elections, the results of which were announced on February 15, brought with them more than just a new set of undergraduate student representatives.
In his elections report, Chief Returning Officer Bradley Chin, who is in charge of overseeing and regulating the elections, detailed new procedures designed to prevent double voting.
York is one of the only Canadian universities to still use a paper ballot system, and these new procedures ensured that students couldn’t vote more than once through the use of a voter database.
Clerks were trained to input the voter’s name and the last digit of their student number into a computer, which would bring up their faculty and college affiliation, and whether or not they had voted already.
Two envelopes were also used this year to keep students from voting more than once in cases where a student’s name could not be found in the system or if it appeared, according to the database, that the student had already voted.
In these cases, the students were to be given two envelopes, and told to enclose their ballot in both envelopes and to drop it in the ballot box.
When the ballots were counted at the end of the voting period, those in double envelopes were compared to the voter lists. If the student’s name appeared twice, the initial vote was to be thrown away and the second ballot counted. If the voter’s name was still not present, it was verifi ed by the administration.
Hamid Adem
News Editor
