Idiots Who Don’t Know How to Run an Election

I teach at a school.  This evening, I received an email alerting staff that there will be a Google Doc up for students to vote for candidates in the 1st round of the upcoming student council elections, in hopes of narrowing down the field in preparation for the real campaign in about a week.  This email asks teachers to allow students to vote during homeroom (first thing in the morning) or during the very last period of the day.

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The email had a helpful note asking teachers to watch for duplicate votes.

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Ok, let’s think about this. 

1. The document has no way for students to input their name or student number.
2. Most students will not have the same teacher for both homeroom and their last period.
3. There is no reasonable way for the last period teacher to know if any of their students voted during homeroom.
4. During any one class period, a teacher may not be able to assure that a student votes only once unless the teacher himself is standing over said computer.

The result?  Some students don’t vote at all (neither teacher gives students a chance to vote, supposing they have an opportunity in the other class) while others vote two or more times.  In the words of Mrs. Cheeky, “great plan.”

To be fair, perhaps the faculty sponsors of this 1st round of elections are well aware of this potential voting issue and don’t give a fuck because they only want to narrow down the field with (some) student input for the campaign a week down the road.  Still, not explaining this in the email makes it sound like they did not consider this (i.e. they are complete dumbasses).

Oh well, not my problem.