Voter turnout for the Associated Students Inc. election on April 19-20 was down 50 percent from the 2004 election.

In the first regular election held entirely online, 2,454 votes were cast to decide the new ASI board of directors and Measures 1 and 3.

A record number of voters, 4,985, turned out for the 2004 election to decide on the Recreation, Wellness and Events Center measure.

ASI saved a significant amount of money compared to past elections by using the online format. Last week’s online election cost $4,500, while the 2004 election cost $27,720.

Patricia Worley, ASI executive director, said last year’ s high turnout was the reason for the unusually high cost. Traditional elections usually cost around $23,000, Worley said.

ASI officials said the online election ran smoothly despite rumors of voter fraud circulating the night the results were to be announced.

ASI outgoing President Josh Wood stepped to the podium at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, and told the anxious crowd that it would have to wait at least another hour so the results could be double-checked.

Some may have had flashbacks to the 2004 election, when final results were not announced until 4:35 a.m., because of the high turnout in the traditional paper ballot election that forced election officials to count and recount ballots by hand.

Randy Morgan, ASI director of finance and administration, said the results in the 2005 election were released late because ASI had asked Election Trust, the company running the online election, to conduct an audit.

Morgan said the audit was done to make sure no voter fraud had occurred, after a student had come forward to ASI claiming he was able to vote several times.

Worley said the audit revealed evidence that one student had tried to vote multiple times.Students were required to log on to vote using their Sac Link account. Each account was given a unique identifier, preventing attempts to vote more than once.

Worley said the student’s attempt failed and the multiple votes were not counted.”They were able to isolate it,” Worley said. “The same encrypted unique identification was identified.”

Scott Baker, who oversaw the online election as ASI Information Technology manager, confirmed that the audit revealed no harm had been done.

“Nothing was hacked. It was just someone claiming they had done it,” Baker said.

Morgan and Worley both said there was no appearance of any other problems with the online voting process.

——————————————————–

Greg Hyatt can be reached at [email protected]