Verilu Infante/The Rider Graphic
Voting in the Student Government Association constitutional amendments election will begin Monday and continue until 11:59 p.m. Wednesday after technical difficulties last week resulted in the postponement of polling.
Students would have received a ballot through their UTRGV email at 8 a.m. Feb. 28 with a unique link to cast a vote online anytime until 11:59 p.m. March 2.
However, according to an email sent by Student Life and Dean of Students, a technical issue with ballot distribution was the reason for the rescheduling.
In an interview with The Rider earlier this week, Delma Olivarez, associate dean of students for Student Involvement and SGA co-adviser, said the issue, identified Feb. 25, was an email distribution outage within Qualtrics, the software company used to generate the ballot.
“So, the ballot distributes to each enrolled student at the university,” Olivarez said. “So, with that technical issue, we are not able to launch the survey, or in this case, ballot to students.”
“I’m hoping by next Monday,” she said. “That’s plenty of time for the software company to have their team address the issue.”
If the ballot distribution issue is not resolved by March 7, Olivarez said the SGA would consider other ways to have the election online.
“Our elections are a lot more accessible in an online format for students, especially since students do attend classes, even some solely online,” she said. “So, it wouldn’t be in person, solely.”
Earlier today, Olivarez told The Rider the issue has not been resolved, so instead an alternative platform will be used called Baseline.
“It’s the same way we do every student election,” Olivarez said. “It’s just a different platform that we use on the back end. That’s the best way I can explain it. It’s gonna look and have the same feel.”
The Rider also spoke with SGA President José Pablo Rojas and Vice President for Brownsville Samantha Lara regarding the rescheduling.
“We’ve been planning on this constitutional amendment since the summer,” Rojas said. “We had multiple meetings to be able to strategize different ways that we can be able to provide these opportunities for students, so they can be able to vote and have a say in our shared governance, and it’s unfortunate.”
He also said that he thinks it is for the best since, this way, everything can run smoothly and nothing will be rushed.
“I mean, it is unfortunate that we had to move it back,” Lara said. “But the way our adviser, Ms. Olivarez, told us to look at it was, you know, more time for marketing and that’s what we’re doing. We immediately met with marketing teams, adjusted the dates on our flyers and things like that, and we’re consistently posting on our social media and so, hopefully, students, you know, are seeing the change and are waiting to be able to officially vote on everything by Monday.”
She said the SGA encourages students to vote on the amendments as it will not only change the way the SGA works, but will change the way students will apply to positions and be able to work within the association.
“It will offer more opportunities for all of UTRGV and no longer just the specific Brownsville and Edinburg campuses,” Lara said. “So, either way, hopefully we get it up and running by Monday and it’ll be, overall, a great opportunity. We just want to see students getting out there and voting.”
Students interested in running in the 2022-2023 SGA Elections can join an online information session hosted by the Elections Committee at 3 p.m. March 11 to learn about available leadership positions, eligibility requirements and membership responsibilities.
Candidate applications will be available March 14 on the SGA Elections V Link page. The deadline to declare candidacy has been extended to March 27.
