Vice Chancellor Tom Stafford confirmed last night that he gave the authority to shut down the electronic voting site for the 2006 spring elections.

Stafford’s actions prompted the Student Government Elections Commission to postpone the vote until April 3 and 4.

As late as 2 a.m. this morning, vote.ncsu.edu redirected users to a SysNews update stating the site had been shut down shortly after 11 p.m. Sunday because of an improper ballot submitted by the Elections Commission.

This “improper ballot,” Stafford said, included the names of part-time students — despite his March 9 memo prohibiting part-time students from running for any Student Government office.

The commission voted by acclimation to allow part-time students the right to vote and run for office in their March 14 meeting.

“It happened because the Elections Commission has refused to comply with my directions and the language of the Student Body Constitution,” Stafford said. “They submitted an invalid ballot.”

Stafford said it was now up to the Elections Commission to decide when the polling site would be reactivated.

“We can have an election as soon as they submit an improved ballot,” he said.

Student Government officials scrambled last night in an attempt to find a solution to the problem during an Elections Commission meeting, which continued after a recess.

“Our stance before now has been that we will take whatever the election results were, whether they were nullified by Stafford or not,” Brian Godfrey, graduate senator and member of the Elections Commission, said. “Now we’re being denied the election results.”

The meeting resulted in a motion to postpone the elections for one week and develop a contingency plan if the administration doesn’t budge. They also passed a motion to keep the part-time students and the referendum on the ballot.

Student Senate President Forrest Hinton said he first saw the site down at 11:10 p.m. Sunday night. He called Stafford’s actions “shameful.”

“Students deserve to submit their own ballot and choose their own leaders without interference,” Hinton said “This action shows that the administration has gone overboard and that there is no true student governance on campus.”

But Stafford said the shut down of the site was a result of Student Government’s actions, not his.

“The outcry should be directed toward the Elections Commission,” Stafford said. “They presented a ballot that was in violation of the student body constitution.”

Hinton, however, said this wasn’t where most candidates directed their outcry.

“Most of the candidates have screamed out cuss words and are not very happy with Tom Stafford,” Hinton said.

Godfrey said Stafford’s action was an ominous sign of the administration’s reach.

“This is not going to end with Student Government,” Godfrey said. “This is going to end with the Technician if this can happen to Student Government so easily.”

But Stafford contends he gave the commission plenty of time to comply to his requirements.

“I was very hopeful that the Elections Commission would see the light and respond to the requirements given to them. I wanted to wait as late as possible to give them the chance to do so.”

Although he said an approved ballot would be one that did not include any part-time students, he wasn’t clear on whether he would allow the referendum that would change the constitution to permanently include part-time students to remain.

“I had previously indicated that if the referendum were to be approved by a student vote, then I would not approve it,” Stafford said. “The outcome of that referendum doesn’t make any difference.”

He said before he would allow the constitutional language to be changed, there would need to be “a lot of discussion and consideration with the right people.”

“I’ve got to hear some pretty compelling arguments because I feel that is not a change we should make,” Stafford said.

Although he declined to give the name of the person who actually shut down the system, he did say it was a “person who has technical access when given proper authority.”