Erica Husse-Jerome’s submission “Restrictive election policies
disadvantage to students” (April 28), about the unethical
election code modifications is dead on. But the issue of the
“IP address delay policy,” which she tangentially
mentions, deserves more attention.
An IP address is a way for senders and receivers to identify
each other on the Internet. Much like the postman can deliver your
letters based upon your physical house address, computers can
communicate with these “virtual” IP addresses.
Last year’s election code stated that once a vote was cast
using a particular IP address, there was a time delay before
another vote could be cast using the same IP address. Typically,
this is an excellent idea. It prevents student groups from lining
up their members and “bloc voting” all at the same time
on the same computer.
But the policy is based upon a major fallacy ““ that an IP
address uniquely determines an individual computer.
At UCLA, most fraternity and sorority houses and even some large
Westwood apartment buildings share a single IP address. This means
that even though there may be many computers in a single building,
it appears as if there is only one. More importantly, it appears to
MyUCLA that every resident in that building is using the same IP
address.
Therefore, with this policy in place, Joe Bruin may try to vote
two minutes after Jane Bruin, who lives in his building. Even
though Joe does not know Jane, Joe will get a screen with a
confusing error message when he tries to vote.
This causes misunderstanding among voters and, in general,
encourages voter apathy.
I believe the IP address delay policy reduced voter turnout last
year. As a candidate in last year’s election, I received
numerous complaints from supporters saying they had major
difficulties voting. Ironically, some living complexes tried to set
up “assigned times” for people to vote to overcome this
problem. But this action actually encouraged more formal
“bloc like” voting.
There are good compromises and technical solutions that need to
be examined to address the problems with the IP address delay
policy. The election board could establish a system that identifies
shared IP networks to reduce the delay assigned to them.
Last year, people who voted on student government computers on
campus were exempted from the IP address delay.
There are also more appropriate technologies ““ like MAC
addresses or cookies ““ for identifying computers uniquely.
Using IP addresses to identify computers in this fashion is a rare
tactic, and most probably, MyUCLA has other possible options it has
already prepared to use. To the best of my knowledge, MyUCLA has
never even been asked about alternatives.
Your student government should examine all of these avenues.
General Representative Josh Lawson tried to advocate against the
IP address delay policy, but his campaign on the issue was a
complete failure. Lawson failed to present council-documented proof
that this policy resulted in voter confusion. He also did not
suggest any compromises or alternative solutions aside from a
complete removal of the policy. Consequently, the council did not
support his cause. His lack of progress has needlessly pushed this
issue onto next year’s council.
It appears that while the election this year may be valid, it
will hardly be as fair and unbiased as it should be. I encourage
all the candidates in this year’s election to publicly
promise to make the fairness of the election process their highest
priority. I also hope that they are willing to examine this issue
with the aptitude and thoroughness it deserves but did not get this
year.
Harmetz , a fourth-year computer science and business
economics student, ran for USAC president in 2003 after serving a
year as a general representative.