Last week’s ROTC survey was a fraud perpetrated upon the student body by the student councils and the Student Development Office. I’m not referring to the question of whether a pro-ROTC vote of any margin would have convinced the University Senate to reexamine an issue it probably feels it settled a long time ago. There’s a much more mundane challenge to the legitimacy of last week’s poll: simply, it was in no way a fair or secure vote, and no one should accept it as such.

In a GS-wide email sent shortly after survey results were released last Tuesday, GS president Brody Berg wrote:

4905 votes were recorded
One person voted 276 times
And “after eliminating the duplicates and matching the unique IDs with our records, 2971 unduplicated votes are determined as ‘valid.’”

(All this information is from Columbia College Student Development and Activities Adviser David Cheng)

What this means is that there were nearly 2000 votes thrown out of a race decided by only 39 total votes. More votes were thrown out than the individual size of three out of the four colleges in the survey. Furthermore, the votes thrown out were done with no supervision and with a fraud detection strategy only as good as “eliminating duplicates and matching unique IDs.”

Crucially, Berg does not tell us why these votes were determined to be “invalid.” We’re left to assume one of three possibilities:

-People were allowed to submit more than one vote, and these votes were counted as “valid” by the system used to tabulate them.

Now in the case of votes that were changed a suspicious number of times, it is impossible to discern whether the vote actually reflects the wishes of the person who supposedly cast it. Indeed, unless that particular person had a bout of particularly schizophrenic soul-searching during the week of the poll, an ID number that has voted a suspicious number of times has by definition been tampered with or compromised.

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Not according to GSSC president Brody Berg. After breaking news of NROTC’s narrow defeat, Berg explained how the results ”get interesting”:

4905 votes were recorded
One person voted 276 times
And “after eliminating the duplicates and matching the unique IDs with our records, 2971 unduplicated votes are determined as ‘valid.’”

(All this information is from Columbia College Student Development and Activities Adviser David Cheng)

What this means is that there were nearly 2000 votes thrown out of a race decided by only 39 total votes. More votes were thrown out than the individual size of three out of the four colleges in the survey. Furthermore, the votes thrown out were done with no supervision and with a fraud detection strategy only as good as “eliminating duplicates and matching unique IDs.”

Now, let me be clear: even though I personally voted no, I believe that this poll result is meaningless due to the huge number of apparently fraudulent votes. I say this out of common sense and because, as a software industry veteran of 10 years and senior in the computer science department, my professional gut feeling tells me that a significant number of fraudulent votes may not have been removed.

I was quoted in the Columbia Spectator on September 26th as saying, “My number one thing from the very beginning was to assess student opinion on NROTC in a fair manner.” In the General Studies student body we are proud to have a lot of students on both sides of this issue. Even though the side I support “won,” due to the huge number of fraudulent votes, myself and the Executive Board of the General Studies Student Council believe both General Studies and the Columbia community at large would be better served on this controversial issue with a poll whose results we can trust.”

Still waiting on word from ESC and CCSC, although, as Noah Baron pointed out a couple of days ago, this wouldn’t be the only time the councils have flubbed crucial ROTC survey-related matters…

EDIT: Admittedly, this email is really freaking confusing—Berg says that 2000 votes were “thrown out,” but that some of the ones that were actually cast are “fraudulent.” Indeed, it takes a pretty close reading to realize that the 2000 he’s referring to are changed votes, which, by his reading, render the final total invalid. So if you changed your vote, Berg would count your initial decision as one “thrown out” vote and your final decision as “invalid”—I’m not sure I buy the argument that this delegitimizes the entire survey, but the fact that one vote was changed over 200 times raises some questions that need answering over the next couple of days.

Now, it’s pretty obvious whose vote was changed that many times. Nevertheless, the fact that this was even possible at all should put the councils in a pretty awkward spot…

More analysis—and hopefully some clarity—is on its way…

1. Continued lack of transparency — Despite the perennial promise of “more transparency” in the mysterious workings of the student councils, those promises have remain largely unfulfilled. In a Bwog comment, someone on one of the student councils claimed that meeting minutes have been posted online, but the vast majority of students clearly remain unaware as to how to locate that website. Furthermore, the last time I checked, the FEC and CCSC websites had not been updated in years.

2. The ROTC Vote — The student councils bungled the ROTC vote big time, and in almost every way possible. The whole vote started out on the wrong foot when the councils held a meeting in which they specifically excluded various anti-war groups and Everyone Allied Against Homophobia–after inviting them! The only member of the Policy Committee present (to my knowledge) was Adil, and class policy directors only knew as much as the rest of the student body. To make things worse, the councils wavered back and forth on not only how many town halls to have, but also whether or not to have town hall meetings at all.

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Election time! A time where new faces pop up, and new (or newly re-worded) platforms are set up for the student body to see on every wall in Lewisohn, Hamilton and beyond. Well, not this time–the entire bloody lot of them at GSSC Elections Commission have resigned. Can GSSC fundamentalists somehow figure out a way to blame Cunningham? Probably!

But the mass resignation was not done without reason. Or at least one would hope not. Apparently, members complained that they were “being asked to legitimize what [they] believed to be an unconstitutional and illegitimate election”, the problem being that the Judicial Committee overruled the deadline for candidacy declaration and did a bit of picking-and-choosing in terms of who could actually submit late declarations. Speaking of the Judicial Committee and constitutional responsibilities, they’ve certainly proved to be a rather ineffective bunch.

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The majority vote was not enough to impeach Cunningham, falling short from a two-thirds vote requirement on Tuesday night. Bearing this in mind, the already-tense GS Council environment will cross into deeper grounds of awkwardness and bad vibes. In a statement made to The Commentariat, Vice President of Policy Nancy Saunders explained that Cunningham “will attempt to damage the reputations of those who voted in favor of his impeachment, or make them otherwise feel uncomfortable on council.” Indeed, Cunningham could do with all the support he can get, knowing that a majority voted against him. What should be more important for Cunningham as it seems now, is to remain collected and finish the year off with a graceful bow out. Unfortunately, Saunders’ predictions may be right–Cunningham was reported saying that he felt that bridges were “burnt” and relationships “torched.”

The Commentariat later caught up with friend of Cunningham and Senior Class President Chikodi Chima who doubted Cunningham would have put in an application for office that was due at noon today. When asked about the failure to impeach Cunningham, Chima believed it “a good thing,” explaining that he was behind a lot of central GS developments such as www.gslounge.com and taking him out now “would be stupid” since it’s so late in the game. Ironically, Chima also pointed out that “many of the people who voted against him last night only have voting power on GSSC because he lobbied for their right to vote as members of council.”

The issue itself simmered as council members found points of contention in Cunningham’s actions, which were sometimes misleading and went against the constitution. This semester, Cunningham reportedly took an extra-light load in order to devote extra hours per week to GSSC. His intentions seem in order, but the heart of the issue seems to be that the way he went about doing things and making decisions lacked the strong foundation of communication needed between members of council. So far, reports have seemed to depict Cunningham as manipulative and self-serving. I think the matter might be a little more complicated than that.