Those that were looking to partake in Faculty Senate elections Wednesday had some trouble.

When elections went online last year, they ran smoothly for the most part, said Jeff Ashley, vice chair on the executive committee for Faculty Senate elections. However, this year has been nothing short of a headache for him.

“If you use Firefox, you’re able to get in, but you’re not able to vote as once you get to the end of the ballot, you’re kicked off,” he said.

The Internet browser Firefox was the least of the problems for Ashley and the rest of the senate as the elections were launched at 8 a.m. and still did not work in most browsers by 1:30 p.m.

Information Technology Services sent an e-mail to the faculty notifying them to download Firefox and Internet Explorer 7, but keep Internet Explorer 6 so Banner, a program that operates in 6, could still run, Ashley said.

The difference between last year and this year is that the person who was operating the faculty elections was assigned elsewhere so another person could regulate the site, a problem Ashley attributes to managerial inefficiency at ITS.

“(When I talked to ITS) they told me it was a software problem, a PC problem,” Ashley said. “I don’t see that. I tested it on my computer (Tuesday) on Explorer 6 and it worked fine.”

Although the online voting yielded a much higher turnout last year than paper ballots in years prior, Ashley now is considering going back to paper.

“It was reported by several faculty,” said Tom Sinclair, a member on the Faculty Senate Elections Committee. “You only can access it with Firefox and updated Outlook Express.”

The ITS help desk received less than 20 calls on the problem and said they are not working at the same playing field as last year, said Chat Chatterji, assistant vice president for Information Technology Services.

Chatterji said ITS is trying to find the source of the problem and will continue to work with Oracle and Microsoft.

“I am somewhat pessimistic that a fix will be quickly forthcoming,” he said.

As a result, Ashley is considering extending elections to Friday.