By Robert Salonga
Daily Bruin Reporter
This spring’s elections are in question after the
Undergraduate Students Association Council failed to approve a
voting process proposed by the Elections Board on Tuesday.
After nearly three hours of heated discussion, USAC voted down
6-3 a proposal made by E-Board Chair Alex Kaplan, which would have
allowed students to vote for USAC candidates through the MyUCLA Web
site.
Council members cited security problems as the primary reason
for their disapproval.
“I don’t think online elections are secure or even
better than paper elections,” said Internal Vice President
Elias Enciso.
Kaplan refuted such claims, referring to the online gradebooks
that are currently available on MyUCLA.
“These gradebooks display grades, which are personal
information, and they comply with federal laws,” Kaplan said,
adding that the online election proposal would be in the same
compliance.
The system proposed by the E-Board is similar to the one USAC
used in December during an emergency election for the external vice
president, with added security improvements.
David Chaum, who received his doctorate in computer science from
UC Berkeley and has written articles on Internet voting security
and privacy, told the council on Tuesday that the E-Board proposal
lacked vital security.
Risks of spoof sites and hackers are very likely in the proposed
system, Chaum said.
“A hacker could put up a fake screen on a public PC that
would prompt students to enter their MyUCLA login and password,
e-mail these off and then force the computer to reboot,” he
said.
Because of these risks, Chaum, in conjunction with Enciso,
presented to council a proposal that he said is superior to the
E-Board’s current plan in terms of voting security.
But Kaplan said he wants voting to remain in the students’
hands.
“The Elections Board is an independent body approved by
USAC, and it is in charge of deciding the elections process,”
Kaplan said. “The process shouldn’t be
politicized.”
Cultural Affairs Commissioner Marselle Washington said
he’s afraid that since MyUCLA can display grades and the
administration can access those grades, it could possibly monitor
how students vote.
“If people in Murphy Hall can have access to my grades,
even for good reason, they shouldn’t have access to my
vote,” Washington said.
The MyUCLA site is run by the College of Letters and Science.
Eric Splaver, director of MyUCLA, answered this question Wednesday
by explaining that there will be no connection between a
voter’s identification and corresponding vote.
Washington also brought up the issue of electioneering, where
candidates try to solicit votes near polling sites. Under the
online proposal, this practice cannot be monitored at off-campus
sites.
“If you really want to prevent block voting and
electioneering, don’t use a public domain like the
Internet,” Splaver told the council Wednesday.
Kaplan said that because of time constraints, implementing the
other proposal is not feasible.
“I’m taking into account what can be done for this
election, and that proposal can’t happen in the time we
have,” Kaplan said.
The election begins May 2.
Enciso said Kaplan acted irresponsibly by going ahead with the
online proposal despite what he said were longstanding objections
by council.
“We did not like the online voting system for the special
election,” Enciso said Wednesday. He explained that USAC
approved the E-board’s proposal at that time because of the
election’s relatively small scale.
Since the general election is on a larger scale, the risks are
much greater, Enciso said.
Shortly after the E-board’s proposal was voted down,
Enciso motioned to put his proposal to a vote.
But objections made by Campus Events Commissioner Jared Seltzer
prompted the council to put off voting until they could meet
Wednesday with MyUCLA representatives, who were not present at the
Tuesday meeting.