HOW TO MAKE SURE ALL THE BALLOTS ARE COUNTED

DARTMOUTH'S SUPERVISOR OF TRUSTEE ELECTIONS

In the wake of the Florida snafu, people may be interested in pursuing other methods of voting than paper ballots and dimpled chads. I chose to hire Election.com to oversee our trustee election in March. They count the ballots off-site, which saves us hours and ensures tallying by an impartial third party. And they eliminate chad issues. They're efficient and secure.

And by choosing—before the election—members of an alumni ballot committee to clarify unclear ballots, the margin of error between intended votes and final tallies diminishes even more.

Our new electronic method also helps to get people more interested in voting and get them to think they can do it more easily. The paper ballot is still sent as well. This allows voters to choose whichever method is most efficient and comfortable for them. Dartmouth has the highest participation rate in alumni elections of the Ivies, at 21 percent, but the percentage had been dropping annually. This year we did not see a decline for the first time in years.

Fisher-Harris is Dartmouth's associate director of alumni leadership.She majored in history. Trusteeelections used to involve a timeconsuming method of counting paper ballots, interpreting ambiguousvotes and hand-keying tallies. Lastspring Dartmouth became the firstcollege in the country to enablealumni to vote for trustees by usingthe Internet.