Automated voting machines (AVMs) will be introduced at the University of Guyana’s Student Council (UGSS) elections this year in an effort to boost student confidence in the electoral process.
According to a release from the university, the new feature will allow for the casting, tabulation and generation of the statement of polls and is expected to improve the integrity of the vote count, therefore allowing students to have more confidence in the legitimacy of the elections.
The new technology was made available through a partnership with the university, the government of Canada and The Delian Project, a Canadian-based non-governmental organisation.
“Of particular interest to the University of Guyana, and by extension the country in general, is the secured transmission of results from remote poll stations to a pre-determined central command center utilising pre-existing GSM network systems. This latter aspect will be robustly tested during the UGSS elections given the spatial distribution of the polling stations,” UG said.
Meanwhile, this year’s elections will see four students vying for the top spot of UGSS’s president. Faculty representatives are also expected to be determined when elections take place on October 1, 3, and 4. The elections will see the reappearance of the Students’ Empowerment Alliance (SEA), the Students’ Movement Advocating Real Transformation (SMART), and the veteran Revolutionaries with the introduction of newcomers Students United Movement. The presidential candidates are Joshua Griffith, Andre Chowbay, Denroy Tudor and Glendfield Dennison respectively.
“Students of the Turkeyen campus are expected to vote on Wednesday, October 1, from 12 noon. The students of the Berbice campus (Tain and John’s annex) will cast their votes on Friday, October 3, 2014. While on Saturday, October 4, the graduate students will cast their votes at the Turkeyen campus,” UG said in its release.
