By the slimmest possible margin, Referendum 3 early this morning emerged as the winner of yesterday's student body−wide vote on reforms to the community representative system.
Referendum 3 extends community representatives full voting rights on all Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate matters, including those concerning the disbursement of the Student Activities Fee. Under Referendum 3, the groups with representation nominate candidates who will then be voted on in a campus−wide election.
The referendum passed with 516 votes to Referendum 4's 515, Elections Commission (ECOM) Public Relations Director Will Yu said early this morning.
The final vote breakdown came to 43.74 percent voting for Referendum 3, 43.63 percent voting for Referendum 4 and 12.64 percent of students abstaining, said Yu, a sophomore. Turnout for the election was 22 percent.
"Regarding the referendum revote on Wednesday ... ECOM would like to thank all those who participated and voted," Yu said, reading a statement to the Daily. "Acknowledging the one−vote disparity in the outcome of the revote, ECOM stresses the importance of voter participation."
TCU President Sam Wallis commended those involved for the extensive outreach effort.
"Congratulations to the authors of Referendum 3," said Wallis, a senior. "I think that even those who disagreed with it have been impressed with the effort they put into publicizing it and getting the student body's attention on this issue. I'm thrilled we were finally able to bring it up for a vote and allow students to have as well−informed a choice as we could under the circumstances."
Wallis also addressed the polarized nature of the election results.
"Clearly, there was a large portion of those who voted who felt otherwise, and we will be getting their feedback, as well as [that of] the authors of Referendum 3, as we move forward to implement these," Wallis said. "There are a lot of questions left unanswered and a lot of specifics that need to be ironed out now that we know the framework."
Wallis called for calm in light of the razor−thin win margin and the heated debate on the matter leading up to the vote.
"I would ask everyone to keep a cool head and maintain perspective, as we've seen some of the rhetoric get heated," he said. "I don't think that serves anybody's interest."
Freshman elections for the TCU Senate and Programming Board positions, originally scheduled to take place yesterday, too, were postponed due to a mistake by ECOM. Freshman elections were scheduled to begin at midnight and will continue until midnight tonight.
ECOM's error denied freshmen access to the ballot containing the candidates for the Senate and the Programming Board. Voting on the referenda was unaffected and proceeded as scheduled.
ECOM, in its announcement of the election's postponement early yesterday morning, said that a technical glitch occurred with the online system used in campus elections, Votenet. A statement sent by ECOM Chair Katherine McManus to the Daily yesterday afternoon, however, said that the error actually occurred with software on ECOM's end.
"[T]he VoteNet software did not malfunction, as was perceived earlier," the statement reads. "We would like to apologize to VoteNet and we repeat our apologies to the freshmen candidates who are most affected by this unfortunate circumstance."
Shel Purohit, the vice president of customer relations for Votenet Solutions, the vendor of the voting software, said yesterday afternoon that no problem had occurred on Votenet's end and that ECOM's earlier claims otherwise were false. McManus, a sophomore, confirmed that in an interview.
"The ballot did not go live because the voter list that was uploaded last night did not match what we had previously sent to Votenet" when setting up the ballot ahead of time, McManus said.
Joe Golia, the director of the Office for Campus Life and the administrative contact for both ECOM and Votenet, said that the ECOM members are new to their positions and are still getting used to working with the voting system. "It was an honest mistake," Golia said.
ECOM officers determined the true cause of the problem later yesterday morning, he said. Because the problem occurred during the middle of the night, they had no means of contacting the Votenet vendor, he added.
"They made an assumption" before they knew all the information, Golia said.
