We’ve uploaded and posted links to all of the reports arising from the AMS Electoral Fraud investigation on our Twitter feed ^[1] but since not everyone is twitter-savvy just yet, here are the links to:

Final Report from Isabel Ferreras ^[2] (Elections Administrator)

Report from Forensic Data Recovery ^[3] (Independent Auditing Firm)

Revised Elections Results ^[4] presented in a somewhat awkward format.

Final cost to the AMS: currently estimated at $42,000-43,000.

A few things to note from FDR’s report:

1) The hack was as simple as what was outlined in our earlier post ^[5]: CWL validation only occurred when the ballot was displayed. Once you had the ballot you could look at the html source code, duplicate it to your heart’s content and submit it as many times as you’d like. No verification occurred upon ballot submission.

2) Where they screwed up was by submitting all the fraudulent ballots from the same IP address, using 18 invalid student numbers, and submitting ballots with hidden form fields filled in.

3) Submitted ballots could not have been overwritten, but ballots that were saved (but not submitted) might have been overwritten.

4) 649 of the 731 student numbers can be found in this document ^[6] which was found using Google.

In the end the only results affected were Senate, VFM and the tuition policy referendum. For the Senate race it appears that Alyssa Koehn is in while Nader Beyzaei is out, though the result of this election was never ratified and so it’s still up to UBC to determine which set of results they’d like to use. Of the 731 ballots cast fraudulently, Nader received 731 votes while Alyssa received 0. (AJ Hajir Hajian also received 731 votes, Joël Mertens got 730, Johannes Rebane got 504 and Spencer Rasmussen got 253 but all were still elected after removal of suspect ballots.)

UBC Spectator and Social Capital received substantial boosts as a result of the suspect voters, and were the only two VFM outlets to get any support from these ballots. During the meeting Isabel reported that UBC Insiders had received $0 on every fraudulent ballot. (We got Lougheed’d.)

Upon revised results, the tuition referendum fails to meet quorum by six votes. However, the margin of error on the results are 15 votes and thus the error bars overlap the quorum threshold. Nothing concrete about the fate of the tuition policy referendum was decided although it’s likely to be disregarded in the absence of a clear mandate.

^[7]

The Tuition Policy Referendum bar graph.

UBC says it is still looking into finding the culprit but you would have to think that even if the identity is discovered and they move ahead with some sort of punishment or criminal charges, they’ll try and keep it very quiet. Council tonight passed a resolution to pursue the matter with the RCMP.

Even in the races where results were not ultimately affected, it seems clear that the fraudulent votes were favouring some candidates over others. In the closest race, Bijan Ahmadian’s margin of victory over Natalie Swift was reduced from 375 votes to a very slim 46 (plus or minus 15).

Is there any connection to be found in the list of candidates for whom the fraudulent ballots showed a clear preference?

President – Bijan Ahmadian

VPX – Stas Pavlov

VPA&UA – Ben Cappellacci

VPF – The Invisible Man Correction: Elin Tayyar?; graph and numbers do not match.

VPAd – Ekaterina Dovjenko (smaller margin)

BoG – Sean Heisler and Azim Wazeer

Senate – Nader Beyzaei, AJ Hajir Hajian, Joël Mertens, [>730 votes]; Johannes Rebane [>500 votes]; Spencer Rasmussen, Blair McRadu, Gary Tse [>200 votes]

Voter-Funded Media – Social Capital, UBC Spectator

SLFS – slight preference for the SRL slate but seems to be randomized

Ubyssey Pubs Society – Everyone but Blake Frederick

Referenda*** – Pro student court bylaw changes; Pro both impeachments; Anti engagement levy; Anti CPI indexing; Pro impeachment bylaw changes; Anti Access UVic; Pro tuition policy; Anti disability seat *** the margins in these tend to be smaller and may be more random than clear preferences