Pot Pourri reconducted voting for the 2012 Senior Superlatives on Monday, after a previous online ballot allowed students to vote multiple times.
In the first round of voting, each of the 59 Senior Superlative categories received more votes than there are students in the Class of 2012. Although there are only 314 Seniors, vote counts for each of the categories ranged from 360 to 560 votes, according to Katie McLean ’12, Co-Editor in Chief of Pot Pourri.
Pot Pourri e-mailed Seniors a link to a new survey, hosted on PAnet and requiring seniors to log into their PAnet account to access the ballot. This will ensure that each Senior can vote only once for each Superlative.
McLean and Isabel Elson ’12, Co-Editor in Chief of Pot Pourri, noticed the issue last Wednesday evening, when the voting first closed.
According to McLean, she and Elson were hesitant at first to recall the vote because they felt that results would have been similar regardless of the over-voting.
McLean said, “When you take nominations, you can see who’s projected to win because whoever [gets the greatest number of] nominations is probably going to win in the real round, although consolidating the vote might change that. Most of the time, the people who were projected to win did win. That’s why we were thinking of just ignoring the over-voting, but it was clearly cheating.”
According to McLean, she and Elson called Haley Scott ’11, former Editor in Chief of Pot Pourri, for her opinion.
“Haley basically said, ‘You absolutely cannot print those results,’” said McLean. “She told us that there is a way to [call an accurate re-vote], and it’s on PAnet.”
McLean and Elson also contacted Carlos Hoyt, Associate Dean of Students, and Christopher Capano, Advisor to Pot Pourri and Director of Student Activities.
According to McLean, Hoyt told them that printing results based on inaccurate data in a student publication would have been inappropriate.
Hoyt said, “I would have been concerned to put out certain data that basically was not valid. I’m really glad that the folks in Pot Pourri were very diligent and responsible to not go with [the over-voted results].”
SurveyMonkey, the online survey tool used to conduct the original round of voting, has a feature that prevents users from voting more than once on the same computer.
According to McLean, however, some students were able to bypass this restriction. Seniors were able to use multiple computers, smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices to vote several times on the SurveyMonkey ballot.
McLean also said that students could use private browsing features on web browsers which prevents a computer from recognizing whether the survey had already been filled out.
Danny Gottfried ’12, who was nominated for four superlatives and voted on the SurveryMonkey ballot himself, said, “I think everyone was [over-voting], but the degree [to which it was done] was different for different people. Some people voted once or twice on smartphones or other devices, but some went down to the PACC and voted on every computer.”
In the nomination round that preceded the final vote, Pot Pourri did not encounter any issues with over-voting because Seniors submitted suggestions for candidates for each superlative through PAnet. According to McLean, only 160 students voted in the nomination round.
McLean said that she did not think students had figured out how to vote multiple times during the nomination round.
“Also, once people were nominated, I think they realized they had a chance of winning and they really wanted to win,” she added. “Whereas in the nomination round, if you’re going to vote five times, it wouldn’t do much.”
This is the first year that Pot Pourri experienced over-voting for Senior Superlatives. In past years, Pot Pourri has conducted voting through PAnet.
McLean and Elson chose to conduct voting through SurveyMonkey this year because they were already familiar with using the site and thought it would be easier to use than PAnet.
Capano said, “[McLean and Elson] already knew how to [use the website], and they wouldn’t have to bother meeting with their advisor or another faculty member to make the survey on PANet, so they thought it would be quicker and simpler.”
Though the new ballot forced students to spend time voting again, most applauded Pot Pourri’s attention to obtaining accurate resulting.
Tobi Coker ’12, a nominee in the Senior Superlatives, said, “It’s kind of annoying that people would want to vote more than once. It’s kind of a trust thing. I think they made the right decision, because you don’t want any discrepancy in the voting.”
Gottfried said, “They did make the right decision. It definitely annoyed some students, including me, but it makes the voting more legitimate. It was necessary but annoying.”
Each superlative category included five nominees from the class of 2012. Results of the voting round were announced on Wednesday, February 1 at 10 p.m.