Student Elections Voted On Electronically For The First Time At CCHS

Campus News April 23, 2012 Admin

BY KYRA BACON On Thursday, April 19th, CCHS became the first school in Broward County to hold student elections electronically. For the first time...

BY KYRA BACON

On Thursday, April 19th, CCHS became the first school in Broward County to hold student elections electronically.

For the first time at Cooper City High School and in Broward County, student election ballots and procedures were the same as a real election. Separated by booths, students bubbled in their votes on a long sheet and then scanned it into a machine. The machine located their pencil marks and counted each vote. Freshmen, sophomores and juniors voted for their class officers, SGA board, and the 2012 homecoming location. Juniors also voted for their senior song, quote, and prom theme for next year. While CCHS is the first school in Broward County to hold electronic elections, schools in other counties have been using electronic ballots for several years.

“I came across the idea at CTV states,” SGA advisor Alfredo Pichardo said. “I contacted the supervisor when we got back, and got the plan for the elections approved.”

Students voted either during one of their elective classes or lunch. Real voting officials joined SGA members and several teachers to verify the students coming in and show them how to use the machines.

Unlike last year, where students wrote down their votes on slips of paper and the votes were hand-counted by the SGA board, elections this year were not free. For each of the 1500 ballots, SGA paid 21 cents, in addition to the nine machines, three for each class, that were rented.

“I think the new voting system is great,” Pichardo said. “It saves SGA a lot of time because we don’t have to count all the votes by hand. This way, it is also more fair so no one can complain that we cheated or miscounted, because the machine does it for us.”

Thanks to the vote-counting machine, the votes were tallied at 2:30 p.m. on Thursday afternoon. On Friday morning, the winners were announced. Homecoming will be held at a hotel instead of the school gym or cafeteria. The rest of the results are as follows:

SGA board

President: Ben Atzmon

Vice-Presidents: David Riusech and Aicha Fall

Treasurer: Sarah Park

Recording Secretary: Christine Samuel

Corresponding Secretary: Matthew E. Johnston

Class of 2013

President: Camille Traslavina

Vice-President: Trent Austin

Treasurer: Janel Escoto

Recording Secretary: Gabriela Mayer

Corresponding Secretary: Sabrina Otero