Official results for many undergraduate faculty society elections were put on hold Friday night as paper ballots were unable to be counted due to privacy issues.

UBCVotes, an initiative between the Arts, Science, Engineering and Human Kinetics undergradute societies to harmonize voting, announced that only “partial results” would be announced on Friday night and that full results would be available on Monday.

Concerns over the validity of paper ballots motivated the decision.

“We can’t evaluate whose ballots should be invalidated from the paper ballots until we have those student numbers. And [university administration] don’t work after 5pm on Friday,” said Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) Elections Administrator Matthew Naylor. “We could have done this [tonight] with the AMS system.” The paper ballots are estimated to make up 25 per cent of total votes, according to a statement on the UBCVotes website.

UBCVotes switched its voting system to the WebVote system administered by UBC weeks ago due to concerns over the program created by the AMS, which has come under scrutiny because of the voting fraud that occurred during their elections.

The switch meant UBCVotes was unable to independently verify if those who cast paper ballots did not also vote online. That task would fall to the UBC Registrar’s office. Since voting closed at 5pm Friday, ballots will be verified Monday morning.

“I didn’t have prior contact with the Registrar’s office. That was Alex’s thing,” said Naylor, referring to Science Undergraduate Society (SUS) Elections Administrator Alex Lougheed, who was in Edmonton for the weekend at a debate tournament.

Despite the delay, many races were able to be announced. In the Engineering Undergraduate Society presidential race, Amanda Li defeated Julian Ritchie and Sina Sahami, with turnout in the election at 32.5 per cent with 1159 voters. In the SUS race, Sumedha Sharma, running unopposed, was elected president, and incumbent councilors Maria Cirstea and Iggy Rodriguez looked set to be re-elected to their positions.

The picture in the AUS was not so clear. With 115 paper ballots still to be counted, many races were too close to call. In the race for the fifth and final AMS representative position, Jordan Moore trailed joke candidate Admiral Ackbar by 29 votes. In the presidential race, only 11 votes separated third place Mike Silley from first place Brian Platt.

With 517 students voting, turnout for the AUS elections was only five per cent. That is an increase of nearly 66 per cent from last year’s elections, although some critics point out that the tens of thousands of dollars spent by the AUS to promote the elections barely caused a ripple.

“It’s hard to be happy with a five per cent turnout, it’s also unfortunate that we didn’t have more candidates run,” said Elections Committee member Will Davis. “But it’s better than in previous years, so it’s a blessing in disguise.”

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