Before fall semester, members received ballots in the mail and returned completed ballots to the secretary for Academic Governance. But the new system allows faculty members to access candidates’ biographies and vote with a few clicks of a mouse.

Although more than 2,500 ballots were sent to faculty members for an Executive Committee of Academic Council, or ECAC, election last spring, only about 400 were returned, said Academic Governance’s executive secretary Sherry Johnson.

“We hope by doing it this way, we’ll get more participation,” she said. “Faculty won’t set them aside and forget about them and they won’t get lost in the mail.”

ECAC Chairman Jim Potchen said although the group decided to drop the paper ballot format last year, he didn’t know when or how the electronic system would be introduced.

Concerns for ECAC at-large members about the new system included security, anonymity and faculty members without experience using ANGEL, said Jon Sticklen, an at-large member of ECAC.

Sticklen said he didn’t know when the new system would be implemented until he received an ANGEL message in his e-mail inbox.

“The idea of electronic voting is, in my view, just long overdue in governance,” Sticklen said. “The one reservation I had was that it had to be absolutely and positively a secure voting system.”

Johnson said she ran a trial election before alerting faculty to the new system to ensure voters would preserve anonymity and to prevent anyone from voting more than once.

Faculty response to the system’s trial run has been positive, she said.

“The only complaint we received was from a faculty member who e-mailed saying they were from the College of Law, and they didn’t feel they had an ANGEL account because they’re from the College of Law,” Johnson said.

The system allows members to easily cast votes but could become a problem if a controversial topic appears on a ballot, Sticklen said.

“We can’t have people voting on a referendum when they don’t know what they’re voting on,” Sticklen said.