The Student Government Association Senate held the last scheduled meeting of its term this past Tuesday.
Soon, a new executive administration and Senate will hold office.
The student government elections occur March 26 and 27 of next week.
During its final meeting the Senate helped to test the online voting system, which has had some new features added since last year.
“We’ve corrected many of the problems that occurred in past elections,” said Dr. Sally Lee, SGA advisor.
In times past, there have been many problems with voting due to the fact that an active e-mail account was needed to vote.
As a result of this, many students did not receive the opportunity to vote because if the account was not active, it took one to two days to activate it.
This year, students will be able to log into the ballot page using their Goldlink ID and password. This will avoid the need to maintain an active e-mail account to vote.
The other major change involves write in candidates.
Since students have the right to write in candidates, there has been a problem in the past of identifying who is actually being written in.
The problem has arisen due to the fact that there is often more then one person of the same name.
This year, in order to end that problem, the z-account name will be required to accompany the candidate’s name.
While voting, there will be a link on the ballot so that students wishing to write someone in may search for the z-account name.
“This will make it much easier to identify who (the voter) meant to vote for,” Lee said.
Also required of write-in candidates this year is a minimum number of votes.
In order to vote, students should go to the ETSU web site between the hours of 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. on the 26th and 27th.
Once there, they can click on “news and events,” and there will be an icon to take voters to the ballot.
Students can contact the SGA for more information.
It is also important to note that once a student clicks the submit button, there can be no changes made to the ballot.
The other major item on the agenda was the overturning of President Chad Reed’s veto. Reed, who last week vetoed Homecoming funding in the amount of $27,000 in an attempt to get the Senate to fund $30,000, lost the argument in a vote of 11-4-0.
Had the veto not been overturned, no money could have been allocated until the summer funding session.
This would have put the vote in the hands of a committee made up of the SGA president and vice president and two administrators.

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