Michelle Kirabo elected new guild president as Victoria University embraces electronic voting system
Michelle Kirabo has been elected as the new guild president for Victoria University as the university made use of the new electronic voting system for the first time.
In a two-horse race, Kirabo, a bachelor of arts in journalism and media studies student polled 76.9% to beat Abdu Basit Kasimaggwa who got 23.1% of the total votes.
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New electronic voting system
During the election, students were allowed to vote using an online system that sees them log into their personal accounts to be able to vote virtually.
Speaking about the election, the Victoria University Assistant Academic Registrar, Precious Aturinda who is also the overseer of the voting system said the VU Elections app was designed and built to cater for transparency and integrity.
“A student can vote only once and when their vote is recorded, the voting button is then automatically disabled. There’s no room for instances of vote-rigging or electoral malpractice in this system since only registered students can cast their votes,”Aturinda said.
The Victoria University Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Lawrence Muganga also described using of the electronic voting system as a great milestone.
“For the first time in history of higher education in this country, we have been able to use an electronic voting system and the contenders were able to count their votes in real time. They were able to tell whether winning or losing in real time,” Prof.Muganga said.
He noted that the system makes work easy for the electoral commission.
As candidate you don’t need polling candidates but just sit on your computer and see the numbers and percentages of how the vote is going. That is the technology we are championing on top of the level of transparency exhibited. We are very proud of this technology which is helping us run elections.”
Prof.Muganga said a number of institutions in the country can pick a leaf from the system.
