Company cautious of new AS e-voting

By Jack Gillum

An online survey company that is hosting two upcoming Associated Students elections does not recommend their service be used for such voting, according to an interview with the site's creator this week.

The elections, in which voters will decide provisions of a modified AS constitution April 11 and choose student government officials April 27, will be online for the first time in five years.

"I would not run something that was really important," said Ryan Finley of Portland, Ore.-based SurveyMonkey.com. "It's just not something we recommend," adding the company "can't guarantee the integrity" of such election results.

Finley says that if elections officials chose to include unique information, such as a student's ID number or e-mail address, they could disqualify repeat or illegitimate information. AS President Annie Selak said that elections officials may require both.

But Finley said there is no way to prevent a student from using another's ID, for example, and voting for someone else. He said that site visitors could also vote multiple times and circumvent "cookies" in a Web browser that prevent duplicate votes.

Elections chair Audrey Wede, however, defends the use of the service, saying that "just because it's a survey site, it doesn't mean it can't be appropriate for a student election."

Wede said the Student Senate expressed concerns of spending too much money on voting services, and that SurveyMonkey was a more functional and cheaper alternative to other services, such as votenet.com.

AS officials switched to the new, Web-based medium this year to curb what they say is a problem of low-voter turnout.

Timothy Haskell, the advisor for AS, says that he is "not surprised" that the company would caution against the accuracy. "That's indicative of a litigious society," he said, calling Finley's comments a "typical PR answer."

Several student governments, such as at the University of Kansas and the University of Florida, have discussed online voting for similar elections. The University of California at Santa Barbara already implemented an online process last year.

"This big question is, How are they authenticating students?" says Matthew Grossman, a network engineer at Login Inc., a Tucson, Ariz.-based Internet service provider. He says that security issues, such as "spoofing," or faking the origin of, student e-mail accounts to authenticate or register, could compromise the election process.

About 30 universities, including Yale and Georgetown, use SurveyMonkey for elections, Finley said.

Haskell was hesitant to address some potential problems, saying he was "reluctant to engage in hypothetical questions" of students defrauding the voting process. "History shows us that fraud takes place" on paper or electronically, he said.

He did concede, though, that online voting here is a new technology in its "very early stages" and that problems could arise.

While Selak says that all results can be easily tabulated, contesting an election may require looking at every person's vote -- perhaps even examining who voted for whom. "We hope it doesn't get to that point," she said.

Grossman said he is skeptical that information given to a third-party company is safe, even though it is secured through so-called privacy policies that prevent the sharing of personal information. "The fact that they're doing it through an outside system, probably without any sort of verification" of a student's vote through e-mail, he said, "is concerning."

Finley said there is no mechanism in place on his service in which voters could see a results page or e-mail that could confirm their choices.

The university has used SurveyMonkey previously, most recently for a survey conducted by the Office of Student Life.

Elaine Woodward, a student government representative at UCSB, said that a recently implemented online voting system at her school has "been convenient" for students to cast ballots.

SurveyMonkey's privacy policy, available on their Web site, states that "personally identifiable information" is not collected, except on a "voluntary basis."

"I would have concerns if we couldn't validate accuracy of the information," said Jeanne Rosenberger, dean for student life, who wants "enough safeguards" in the voting process to ensure accuracy.

Online voting was among the paper method first used here in 2000. About 100 students at the time registered to vote and 58 cast ballots online, according to archives.

* Contact Jack Gillum at (408) 554-4849 or jgillum@scu.edu.