Automated voter machines for UGSS elections

Sep 30, 2014 News

The annual elections for the posts of President and Faculty Representatives for the University of Guyana Students’ Society are scheduled for October 1, through to October 4, 2014.
Students of the Turkeyen campus are expected to vote on Wednesday, October 1, from 12 noon. The students of the Berbice campus (Tain and John’s annex) will cast their votes on Friday, October 3, 2014. While on Saturday, October 4, the graduate students will cast their votes at the Turkeyen campus.
The four student groups contesting the elections this year are the Students’ Empowerment Alliance, with presidential candidate hopeful Mr Joshua Griffith ( the out-going Senior Vice-President, UGSS); the Students Movement Advocating Real Transformation, with presidential candidate hopeful Mr Andre Chowbay (out-going Assistant Secretary, UGSS), newcomers the Students United Movement, with presidential candidate hopeful Mr Denroy Tudor and the veteran Revolutionaries, with presidential candidate hopeful Mr Glendfield Dennison.
A new feature added to the voting process this year, is the use of automated voter machines (AVMs) -as a pilot/case study – to allow for the casting, tabulation and generation of the statement of polls. The use of electoral technology is expected to improve the integrity of the vote count, allowing students to have more confidence in its legitimacy.
The use of this new technology was made possible through the university partnering with the government of Canada, and the Canadian-based non-governmental organisation known as The DELIAN Project, to fund the use of the automated technology.
The key benefits of using an AVM-based system include transparency, accessibility, speed in the tabulation of votes and a reduction in administrative costs. The DELIAN Project has piloted the use of the AVMs in a number of emerging democracies with much success and more recently the electoral technology was used at the University of West Indies (Mona Campus) for student elections.
Of particular interest to the University of Guyana and by extension the country in general, is the secured transmission of results from remote poll stations to a pre-determined central command center utilising pre-existing GSM network systems. This latter aspect will be robustly tested during the UGSS elections given the spatial distribution of the polling stations.
The DELIAN team came in Guyana from yesterday. The members were expected gave a demonstration of the AVMs on the same day, at 15:30 h in the Education Lecture Theatre, Turkeyen Campus.
The University of Guyana has extended an invitation to the Guyana Elections Commission to observe the voting process at both campuses.
Meanwhile, the Revolutionaries Party (Revs) in a statement called on the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) not to observe the use of the AVMs in light of the short notice about the use of the new voting system.
“We are further convinced that this time frame will not allow for our students to be properly and adequately advised, and that this new system will be without any proper test runs before the elections commence two days after the demonstrations at Turkeyen and Tain campuses.”
“We call on the Guyana Elections Commission, who has been extended an invitation by UG to observe the voting process at both campuses, to refuse same as students will not be sufficiently informed on this new feature, an egregious act which strikes at the heart of a democratic and transparent process.”
The party further said in a statement that “we oppose this new measure on the basis that there has been no voter education program to date on this new voting system, and candidates and their campaigns also have not been briefed in any meaningful way on how this system operates and any shortcomings, if they exist. Revolutionaries Party rejects the new measure on the basis that in any democratic society voter education is a paramount feature of the entity conducting the elections and not left up to contending parties.”

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Automated voter machines for UGSS elections

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