Temporary Election Rule Regarding Online Voting
Following along nicely in the pattern of “making shit up as we go along” the Election Chair is up to Temporary Rule #3.
Here is the brief outline of what is happening:
2. Whereas: In addition to the expense of the production of the current voting program, it would cost thousands of dollars to modify that program to uphold the specifications in SB30 clauses 3 and 6 (The Clauses) by implementing a five minute delay between log-in and access to the voting page, and limiting voting to one vote per MAC address.
1. Ordered: Title IV, Article 3, Section 2, Subsection 7, Clause 3 and Title IV, Article 3, Section 2, Subsection 7, Clause 6 of the ASUC Bylaws are suspended for the Spring 2006 ASUC Elections.
My prediction: There will be massive violations of the rules regarding online elections. I can say this with some certainty because I personally plan on engaging in such massive violations of the rules regarding online elections. Catch me if you can!
[And if you think that this makes me some type of hypocrite for chastising others for breaking the rules while I am doing the same thing, you are quite an astute individual. My personal philosophy is that people can break any rules they please: they should just be ready to accept the consequences when they are caught. Also, I plan on losing anyway, so any cheating by me is really rather silly in the grand scheme of things.]
I wonder if we should be bothered that the updated by-laws which include these sections are not available at either asuc.org or election.asuc.org. What is the impact of this?
Comment by Beetle — April 23, 2006 @ 3:59 pm
There does seem to be no concern whatsoever in providing a way for students to be informed about what the ASUC is up to and the rules under which it operates…
Not sure how that would relate to a suit, but I imagine somewhere in the ASUC monstrosity there is someone tasked with keeping that shit up to date who isn’t doing his or her job.
Comment by Andy R. — April 23, 2006 @ 4:02 pm
How many people do we pay to not inform us?
Comment by Chris Page — April 23, 2006 @ 4:09 pm
THIS IS RIDICULOUS!!! Online voting would not have been passed had these security provisions not been included. ASUC continues to go down hill.
Comment by BCR's Former Worst Enemy — April 23, 2006 @ 8:00 pm
The ASUC website has not seen updates, at least as far as documentation is concerned, all spring semester. The webmaster is the same as the currently updated elections website…curious indeed.
Andy: It’s not making up shit as she goes along, the senate neglected to suspend the bylaws which were impossible to comply with under the circumstances. As time went by her request continued to be ignored so she had to make the order.
Chris: I would say there are 3, maybe 4 stipended individuals who collectively should be keeping students informed. Depending on decisions of executive officers, duties may be assigned differently from year to year.
Comment by Edward Martinez — April 23, 2006 @ 11:40 pm
Edward, I think the ASUC website’s documentation section IS updated insofar as the Senate meeting minutes and packets (whatever they are) are concerned. I just read minutes from an April 5th meeting, fairly recent.
Much of the rest is not updated though, like the bills.
Comment by Jim Fung — April 24, 2006 @ 12:12 am
Jim,
Thanks for the info. Out of the documentation it’s primarily the bills I check for and those are severely lacking.
Other parts of the site are very much up too date. Inconsistencies come from some of the turnover in the ASUC.
Comment by Edward Martinez — April 24, 2006 @ 1:10 am
The claim that it would cost thousands of dollars to make the specified changes is complete and utter bollocks, and I would know.
I led the team that hacked the 2003 ASUC elections. The following year, when the members of the Elections Council realized they lacked a working election server 24 hours before the election, they called me. I recruited and led the team that wrote the 2004 election server, and I did it in under 12 hours. I’m told that, though it’s been through two rewrites, the modern election server code is a descendant of my team’s 2004 code. I doubt any of our original code remains, but I suspect our architectural framework still does.
The ASUC’s actions in this regard make two things readily apparent. First, the ASUC is simply unwilling to pay market rates for skilled programmers. Second, the ASUC is blatantly taking advantage of skilled Open Computing Facility volunteers by “donating'’ pennies on the dollar to the OCF in exchange for their time.
(Dan)
Comment by Daniel C. Silverstein — April 24, 2006 @ 2:26 am
da Asuk once again is bein smashT. dese f00ls cant even run a simple election… why we give dem a budget of 2 million dollah’s?
Comment by smashT — April 24, 2006 @ 10:15 pm
Actually, the 2005-2006 ASUC budget is over 500K short of 2M. To be exact, the 2005-2006 ASUC budget is $1,483,805.27. That might seem like a lot of money, but, think about it, and you’ll realize it’s not. Most startups at the Angel investor/seed phase raise between .5M and 3M.
Facts aside, if you don’t like it, what are you doing about it?
(Dan)
Comment by Daniel C. Silverstein — April 25, 2006 @ 12:02 am
A few more notes:
As someone who’s seen the inner workings of two elections, I can tell you that running one is not a simple task. Setting up, monitoring, and tearing down fifteen polling sites scattered around the Berkeley campus for three days in a row is, to put it mildly, non-trivial. Which is to say nothing of the backend required to do it online.
Also, the ASUC doesn’t really run its elections anymore, at least, not the technical aspects. Those are handled almost entirely by the Open Computing Facility. I’m actually kind of curious to see what would happen if student computing groups like the OCF and the Computer Science Undergraduate Association choose not to help the ASUC their elections. To put it in parlance smashT can understand, I believe the ASUC would be FUX0R3D.
Comment by Daniel C. Silverstein — April 25, 2006 @ 2:23 am
runnin an election is simple dawg. collect da ballots and count dem.. wtf is so hard bout daT?
chek dis. dey should juss go to 100% online votin… save 50k.. spend daT on student groups or sum REAL lobbyin!
smashT solutions bak to bak.
Comment by smashT — April 25, 2006 @ 5:01 pm
runnin an election is simple dawg. collect da ballots and count dem.. wtf is so hard bout daT?
chek dis. dey should juss go to 100% online votin… save 50k.. spend daT on student groups or sum REAL lobbyin!
smashT solutions bak to bak.
Comment by smashT — April 25, 2006 @ 5:02 pm