After last year’s Government of the Student Body election, when a technical problem allowed students to begin voting online a few hours early, some people have been left wondering if their vote will be secure this year.

“A lot of people voted early, and those votes didn’t count,” said Caleb Shinn, GSB election commissioner. “Nobody knew about it until almost right before [the polls] closed the next day.”

GSB officials said it was unclear how many votes were affected by the glitch, whether they were counted and if the students who voted were able to recast their ballot.

Shinn said he believes those who voted early assumed their vote would be counted because the system appeared to be running.

This year, GSB is taking precautions to ensure there are no similar security issues.

“We’re running a test site right now inside GSB,” Shinn said.

The test site is checking to make sure each student will be allowed to vote only once.

“There shouldn’t be any problems if it goes for that exact 48-hour period,” said James Vogl, GSB Liberal Arts and Sciences senator.

There is, however, the possibility of other problems with the voting process.

“The only problem I anticipate is there might be a couple people that won’t be able to log in due to the fact that we don’t have their e-mail listings,” Shinn said. “They either didn’t release the information for us to put them on the access list or their e-mail address was wrong that they gave to the Office of the Registrar.”

GSB has also taken precautions to prevent students from voting with other students’ user names. An e-mail address will be available on the site for students who have problems logging in and think that someone else may have voted using their user name.

Past problems with voting included votes for fictitious write-in candidates, like Mickey Mouse, which threw off election results. This problem has been compensated for this year, as write-in votes will only be allowed for people listed with the Office of the Registrar.

Shinn said he believes the only problem they are not prepared for is hackers.

“That’s the one you really can’t plan for,” Shinn said.

“You can only hope that your system is secure enough to begin with.”

Despite last year’s security problems, Shinn and Vogl said they believe online voting remains the best method for the GSB election because of the convenience it offers students.

“I don’t anticipate any problems this year,” said GSB President Sophia Magill.

Online voting started with the 2001 GSB elections, when more than 6,200 students cast votes, shattering ISU records and shocking GSB officials.

The turnout in 2001 was the highest in the history of GSB general elections.

In last year’s election, just more than 5,000 students voted for GSB executives alone.

The total number of people who voted for senators as well as executives in last year’s elections was unavailable.

The winners of this years election will be announced at 8:30 p.m. Thursday in the Gallery Room of the Memorial Union.

– Daily staff reports contributed to this story.