Server issues didn’t impact turnout, chair says

LINH NGUYEN, Evergreen reporter

Despite server issues during the special election, the ASWSU election chair said it did not negatively impact voter turnout.

Election board chair Bradley Warren said 7 percent of the entire student body voted. He s was pleasantly surprised at the turnout with students having less than a day to vote. In last year’s general election, about 22 percent of the student body voted over the course of two days, he said. In 2016 about 28 percent of the student body voted over four days, according to a previous Evergreen article.

The special election website issues stemmed from software within the server that failed to run properly and did not activate. Since the online voting server had not been active, many students could not vote. After discovering the website issue, technicians were able to get it up and running, three and a half hours after polls were supposed to open. As a result, Warren decided that it would be best to extend the voting deadline to 11 p.m.