Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the school election for president will be conducted online. Consequently, electronic voting is gaining much attention accompanied by mounting concerns.


The upcoming school election for president will take place on Nov. 25 and 26. Students who wish to participate in the voting need to sign an agreement where they consent the school election commission to collect personal information. The presentations of the candidates announcing their commitments were uploaded on the school election commission website. It is meant to provide additional information about the candidates for voters.


The school is utilizing the electronic voting system called “K-Voting,” developed by the National Election Commission. This system encourages students to participate in elections by enabling them to vote anywhere and anytime via mobile and PC. Accordingly, higher voting rate is expected.


Choi Seo-yeon, a freshman at the Department of French Language and Literature, shared her opinion on the online voting procedure.


She highlighted that it is up to the school, student council, and students to raise the rate of people signing the agreement form. She worries that the online election might result in a lack of student participation. Choi pointed out that the low participation rate was evident since the percentage of students who signed the personal information agreement marked only 31.1 percent, which means that 4,604 out of 14,818 students signed the agreement.


“Online voting is the most sensible method nowadays since the pandemic is ongoing,” Choi said. “Students assembling on campus to vote can be exposed to the risk of COVID-19.” Choi remarked active advertisement of the school and said, “Additionally, I am aware that the school is sending out advertisements of the election through mails, SNS posts, and offline advertisements on campus. Thus, it is significant that students be aware of the fact that they can only participate after they sign the personal information agreement since it is our right to participate in the election.”


Currently, Emotion, the 52nd Student Council, is trying their best to hold the election democratically. The student voting reflection ratio is 8.5 percent and is fixed per student, making the percentage of vote reflection per student 0.005 percent.


Consequently, the student council protested to the student election commission by mentioning that they did not take into consideration the student demands of increasing the student voting reflection ratio. They also highlighted that the school headquarters did not cooperate proactively in order to gather student agreement regarding the personal information even though students make up absolute majority of the school. Finally, they pointed out that even though the election is being conducted online in a special situation, the student voting reflection ratio is the same as the past.


Conclusively, the election for school president will be taking place online on Nov. 25. Students took part in the policy debate conducted by the candidates on Nov. 17 through YouTube livestream. Additionally, those who could not participate can view the recorded video of the policy debate in the school election commission website.

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