AUEC’s Response to Controversy Surrounding Alums Voting

In response to the allegations of a “coverup”, the AUEC would like to make a detailed statement on the supposed “glitches” in our system.

To begin with, the initial mails were indeed sent to alumni who had since graduated. Why did this happen? Because the LMS data we were provided had not been updated to reflect the students who had graduated. We were informed of this a few days before the elections by a former President of Ashoka’s HoR, KC Sachin. The Head of IT, Kshitij Kapoor, obtained an updated list of students from the OAA and on the basis of the same invalidated the voter links and codes of students who had graduated. However, a couple of names remained in the system. Ayush Uchill, a graduated student of Ashoka, informed us that a friend of his (Akhil Vohra, also a graduated student) had voted NOTA despite having graduated. Mr. Vohra has confirmed this.

The Head of IT then went back to the master list of enrolled students and physically checked all the votes made against this list of students. He conclusively found that only Mr. Vohra had cast his vote among the students who had graduated. As we write this statement, the AUEC has conducted another thorough check and has found that no other unauthenticated voter cast their vote. The AUEC then went on to delete his vote. Kshitij then wrote a code that recorded a student’s vote only if their Ashoka ID was on both the OAA list and the LMS list provided to us. This conclusively prevented any other alumni from having their vote recorded.

Now the AUEC would like to address this idea that the Election Commission somehow “covered” up the “glitch”. These concerns were discussed with the now President of the HoR, Deep Vakil. Deep requested the AUEC to put out a public clarification before the election of the President last night. The AUEC had written a draft clarification mail (the contents of which are included in this statement) explaining the issue and that it was impossible for any alumni to have voted. Unfortunately Mr. Katyal’s article went ahead before we had the chance to send this email.

The Edict asks whether scrubbing off someone’s vote violates secret ballot. Once again, the AUEC only knew that Akhil Vora voted as the system only shows us that the person voted. For example, if student X voted for Party Y we would only know that student X had voted and not who X voted for. We could not possibly have known his vote and knew only because Mr Uchill informed us that it was a NOTA vote. We subsequently confirmed this with Mr. Vohra who confirmed for a fact that he voted NOTA. Once again, the AUEC does not know who a student voted for and only know that a student has voted. The secrecy of the student’s ballot is sacred and was not compromised in any way.

The Edict asks “When did they (the AUEC) scrub it (the vote) after some students had voted anonymously?” Kshitij removed the vote at 5:33 PM, conducted the thorough check of whether students not on both LMS and OAA lists had voted as mentioned before and confirmed that no other unauthenticated student had voted.

The Edict has also stated that the AUEC has kept mum about this issue when it is patently clear, and will be confirmed by others, that the AUEC discussed the issue with the current President, Deep Vakil, who asked for a public statement which the AUEC, as mentioned earlier, planned to send out tonight.

A word must be said about several election related allegations coming out recently. As some members of the student body will recall, a mail alleging a bug in the election system had been sent out on the morning of the election. This was done without a full conversation with the Election Commission and was a theory that was debunked. The Edict article strikes exactly the same note. While a single meeting with the AUEC could have clearly clarified the situation at hand, they regrettably did not choose this path. Instead, an article without the full possession of all the facts has been published and this is bound to create confusion among the students.

The AUEC fully apologises to Mr.Raghav Katyal for the earlier version of the article. We recognise it was co written by Edict staff.