If the results of the recent Student Government election are any indication, those individuals responsible for tallying the votes seem to have skipped their Gordon Rule computational requirements. Simply put, the numbers just don't add up.
The Independent Voice has received conclusive proof that an entire ballot box is missing from the vote total. The whereabouts of that box remain unknown. At least one student, who asked not to be identified, has examined the write-in ballots presented by elections officials and determined that her ballot is not present.
The revised vote total as of October 25 was 3,894 total votes, up from the original total of 3,583 votes. The 311 vote difference, according to Supervisor of Elections Richard Williams, comes from a recount by Williams and his staff.
This new number emerged after the Senate had validated the election and sworn as to its accuracy.
"We counted again and came up with the new number," Williams explained.
When and where this recount took place is unclear, and Student Government Secretary Sandy Vernon said she was unaware of any recount.
According to the new totals, a maximum of 2,484 votes were cast for the Focus Party candidates. This means that at least 1,410 votes were cast for someone (or something) other than Focus Party candidates (36 percent of the total vote). Strikingly, in an election with only one party on the ballot, over one out of every three students took time out of their schedules to send a message to Student Government.
Many students wrote messages on their ballots rather than casting a traditional vote. For example, one ballot cautioned Student Government against taking Greek votes for granted. Student Body President Kevin Mayeaux denied that Student Government was losing support from the Greek system. "Just because that ballot had that on it doesn't mean it was written by a sorority member," responded Mayeaux.
Even more telling than the messages is the fact that the percentage of write-in votes should be even higher than the figures reported by election officials.
According to Vernon, any ballot that registered a vote for the Honor Code was electronically recorded by a counting machine. If a ballot was cast that contained a vote on the Honor Code along with a write-in vote or written statement, the ballot was only recorded as if it had been blank except for the Honor Code vote.
"In that instance," Vernon said, "your 'No One' vote would not have counted."
In addition, many ballots were cast blank. Blank ballots were excluded from the vote totals for unclear reasons.
These lost votes may help explain the huge discrepancies between the alleged total number of votes cast (3,894), the number of signatures from people obtaining ballots (3,672), and the number of ballots given out by poll workers (3,176). Adding to the confusion is the loss of signature sheets and poll workers' reports by election officials.
Election officials only compounded the problem by failing to reconcile the actual number of ballots in the ballot boxes with the number of ballots given out by the poll workers while in the ballot-counting room.
"The ballot-counting procedure was pure chaos," testified Laurie Gelman, who represented Ray Long and the Committee for Student Sovereignty in the ballot-counting room.
"Ballots lying everywhere, dozens of people coming and going, the arbitrary and capricious disqualification of hundreds of ballots. The count is clearly inaccurate. We have no true results."
The complete text of all write-in ballots can be viewed on the World Wide Web. The address is: http://www.afn.org/~isc/ballots.html.
Although Student Government officials describe these as "B.S. ballots" they accurately reflect the true feelings of a majority of University of Florida students. Their voices can not be ignored.