Getting ready for Homecoming

     GCSU is adopting a new voting system to literally simplify the process to one click of a button. The school is shifting from ballot voting to electronic voting available through myCATS.
     “The way the school did it in previous years was on paper ballots,” SGA President Ryan Greene said. “Students would be able to vote outside the A&S fountain between 9 and 4. It was inconvenient because many students don’t go in front of A&S, and we couldn’t have multiple locations because it would hard to keep track if students voted more than once.”
In last year’s election roughly 500 students out of 6,000 participated in the elections, inspiring SGA to make changes.
     “We needed to make it more convenient,” Greene said. “We looked at other universities that had this system and 90 percent of them saw a drastic increase. Voting is open 48 hours and more importantly to me, it is right on your myCATS and students are already on there checking their email and class assignments.”
     When initially brainstorming on how to get students more involved in voting, SGA had two concerns. They wanted to give students another reason to vote and they wanted to bring the election to the students.
     “We first thought of having more than one location on campus, but that would prevent us from tracking if students voted more than once,” Greene said. “We also thought of making an electronic database to monitor student votes, but that ended up being too confusing.”
     Greene finally reached out to other Georgia universities through an email program called list serve where he can ask other SGA presidents in the state of suggestions they have. Greene received positive feedback and the school approved the change.
     As far as actual voting goes, it is just as easy as it seems. To vote, students click the student tab under myCATS and in the middle o the page, there is a link to access the ballots. SGA and Mr. and Miss GCSU elections take part simultaneously, starting Wednesday, Feb. 27 at midnight and ending Friday, Feb. 29 at midnight.
     Junior Kat Wall of Delta Zeta is running for Miss GCSU and believes the change will be beneficial to the students.
     “I think it will help not only me but everybody else,” Wall said.    “People are not always on campus all day. Different major shave off campus commitments to meet and they can’t pass by A&S to vote manually. This will help student participation in the election.”
     Other candidates, including senior Adam Hammond of Kappa Alpha, are promoting electronic voting in their campaign. Hammond has been posting fliers with the date of the election and indicates voting can be done through myCATS. Hammond would like to see the system stay past this year.
     “A lot of bigger schools, such as UGA, use it and it adds one more thing to the way we do things to put our school on the level of other top schools in the state,” Hammond said.
     As for making this system permanent Greene says they will just have to see how it goes.
     “If it is not convenient, then students are not going to come to it,” Greene said. “But that doesn’t mean that students don’t have concerns. We are bringing it to them and if we get a good turnout, then who knows.”

How to vote
1. Sign in to myCATS.
2. Go to the
“Student” tab.
3. Click on
ballot link.
4. Vote.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Feb 22 2008. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry