![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/IMG_7243.jpg\")
<\/a>Around five percent of the student population has voted in previous years; Turcotte hopes that the switch to e-voting will change those numbers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe real question is whether it will increase voter turnout,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s our hope that it will do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Camosun registrar Scott Harris approached the student society and suggested e-voting, says Turcotte.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a result of those conversations we\u2019ve decided to do an e-voting trial,\u201d says Turcotte. \u201cWe\u2019re, essentially, buying a licence from a vendor that provides this sort of service.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harris says that the vendor is extremely secure and that the platform, Election Runner, is used by many companies and governments.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe evaluated four different e-voting platforms, and that was the one that was not only the most user-friendly and gave the best experience, but was also the cheapest,\u201d says Harris, \u201cwhich usually doesn\u2019t go hand-in-hand.\u201d<\/p>\n
Turcotte says it cost $2,025 to get the system up and running, which is a one-time cost paid by the CCSS. Through e-voting, students at Lansdowne will be able to vote for Interurban executives and vice versa; this was not possible before. The CCSS could also use the software to get students\u2019 input for other reasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe software can be used to poll students on other issues if there\u2019s a desire to do that,\u201d says Turcotte.<\/p>\n
Camosun College also holds elections for student positions on its board of governors. Harris says that the college has chosen to combine the CCSS and Camosun elections for the first time through the e-voting process.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve done that because students are voting for their representatives regardless of which representing body it is,\u201d says Harris, \u201cwhether it\u2019s CCSS or board or senate. I wanted to make it as seamless of a process for students as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
There will be no in-person voting this time around; Turcotte says paper-and-pencil voting will not be an option for students in the interest of clarity.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be confusing and hard to calculate if we had two separate systems going,\u201d says Turcotte. \u201cThere are other advantages to the electronic system. It\u2019s easier to administer. It requires less staffing, hours, and effort. Certainly, it\u2019s easier to count.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both Turcotte and Harris say that students don\u2019t need to worry about any corruption or security issues with the electronic voting.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a high level of security involved,\u201d says Turcotte. \u201cOnce the election\u2019s started, it\u2019s locked down. Each student is emailed an individual voter ID. It\u2019s not like your friend can open it up and click it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harris says that the order of the candidates is also electronically randomized, which will hopefully reduce order bias.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look at any election research and whatnot, you\u2019ll know that the first name on the ballot\u2026 there\u2019s sort of an additional push for that name just being first, right?\u201d<\/p>\n
Harris also says that the platform, Election Runner, is completely confidential.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the other concerns I heard when we first started exploring this was, \u2018Well, the administrators have the ability to see who\u2019s leading on the back end and maybe do some election interference,\u2019\u201d says Harris. \u201cThe administrators of the election cannot see the results until the results are final.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Camosun College Student Society\u00a0(CCSS) is moving over to electronic voting in their upcoming student elections. Instead of voting in person, Camosun students will receive an email with a link to an electronic ballot, says CCSS executive director Michel Turcotte. \u201cE-voting is an initiative that the student society has been trying to pursue for many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13714,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,184],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-issuemarch-1-2017"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13713"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13786,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13713\/revisions\/13786"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}