After the election on April 28-30 there has been concern over Fresno City College’s Associated Student Government (ASG) election process. Candidates claimed the online voting system lacked safeguards to prevent duplicate or non FCC student votes.
Candidates noticed the voting link did not require student identification, such as a school email or student ID number. This made students question if only FCC students were able to participate in voting for the election.
ASG Senator and presidential candidate Love Quezada said she immediately noticed issues with the ballot process after receiving the voting email.
“When I got the email for the voting, I was very confused as to why it didn’t ask for student info,” Quezada said. “For example, student ID, maybe even a student’s birthday. Like anything to confirm that a student at FCC is voting.”
Quezada said she believes the lack of verification made the election process unfair.
“Especially because if ASG is mainly for Fresno City students, I don’t think it’s fair for, for example, someone close to the community to vote,” Quezada said.
Another presidential candidate, Diljot Singh Rai, had similar concerns and claimed the ballot system could be accessed multiple times from different devices or browsers.
“When I opened the ballot myself and I voted, it didn’t require anything,” Rai said. “It didn’t require a sign in.”
Rai said while the same browser prevented him from immediately voting again, he claimed opening the ballot on another browser or device would allow someone to submit another vote.
“If I voted on my laptop, on a guest profile, I could go ahead and vote as many times as I wanted to,” Rai said.
Both candidates said they brought up these concerns after noticing what they believed was a weak system.
Rai said he emailed FCC officials, such as the FCC president, Director of Student Activities Dr. Ernie Martinez and members of the academic senate.
Madison Reyes, the ASG election commissioner who is involved with setting up the election declined to be interviewed by The Rampage.
Rai said he expressed to them that the voting system was done in an inefficient way.
According to Rai, he received a response from the vice president of Student Services stating there was no evidence showing non FCC students cast votes in the election. However, Rai questioned how they could verify whether all votes came from FCC students without requiring school or student information.
The Rampage reached out to Michelle Smith, the vice president of Student Services but they didn’t reply prior to publication.
“Can you prove to me that they are in fact students on this campus?” Rai said.
Quezada also expressed frustrations over the lack of safeguards preventing potential duplicate votes.
“If you reloaded the page and you waited long enough, it let you redo it,” Quezada said. “So you could put in, like, as many votes.”
Beyond these concerns over the ballot system, both candidates said the controversy surrounding the election process could possibly discourage students from wanting to participate in future ASG elections.
“This has completely discouraged me from even running for president at all anymore,” Rai said.
Both candidates said they would like to see future elections have stronger student verification methods, such as requiring student ID numbers or school emails before ballots can be submitted.
“I would say requiring a student ID or a student email onto the form would be the best way to actually verify whether or not that is an actual student who goes to FCC,” Rai said.
