UA advocates voting by Web

The Nominations and Elections Committee is looking to change the Undergraduate Assembly election process. At last night's UA meeting, NEC Vice Chairperson and Engineering sophomore Ben Goldberger proposed the idea of running the spring UA elections through Netscape, the World Wide Web-browsing software. Under this system, any student with access to Netscape will be able to vote in the election, he said. There would also be several polling locations set up with computers, so students can vote around campus, Goldberger added. He explained that this system would have the same security as Penn InTouch. Students would have to enter their social security numbers and personal access codes into the computer before being allowed to vote. And once a student has voted, his or her name would be added to a database. But during debate, one UA member, College sophomore Josh Rockoff, expressed concern over the potential security risks of this endeavor, saying that he had seen at least one student break into Penn InTouch in the past. Goldberger said candidates for elections would not be allowed to solicit votes in computer labs around campus. UA Chairperson and College senior Lance Rogers said Stanford University implemented a similar voting system, and it raised the voter turnout to about 80 percent. In the last UA election in March, only 13.6 percent of the student body voted. The UA body voted unanimously to support the NEC in bringing this idea to the administration. Also at last night's meeting, the body discussed space allocated in the Perelman Quadrangle for student government groups. Rogers said graduate student government, undergraduate student government and the Office of Student Life Activities and Facilities are currently slated to share what is currently the 21st Century Project office on the second floor of Houston Hall. He added that while the location sounds satisfactory, the amount of space allocated is small -- "probably the size of a closet." Rogers said that while the UA's current office is 240 square feet, the new office would only be 150 square feet. "We are looking to see if we can get more space," he said. In order to make room for a large Houston Hall lobby with a cafe, Rogers said the office now used by the UA, which is located on the first floor of Houston Hall, will be ripped out, along with all of the other offices on that level.

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