Because of an error in the tallying system for the Undergraduate Student Government elections, the head of the Elections Commission announced a new list of town senators last night.

Some senatorial candidates complained to the commission about the previous results of town senate because the total amount of votes was less than they had anticipated after talking to voters.

"Some candidates came to me and said, 'Look, I know at least five people who voted for me through paper ballots,' " said Online Voting and Tallying Commissioner Buck Thompson.

Outside of the USG office, Head Elections Commissioner David Britz announced a new list of town senators excluding some of the initial winners.

Seven town senate candidates were falsely announced as winners on election night last week. Nicholas Mahoney (junior-biology), Rob Kaplan (sophomore-labor and industrial relations), Kurt Unruh (junior-political science), Matthew Kutzler (sophomore-engineering), Beenu Puri (junior-international politics), Conor Moran (sophomore-political science) and Tom Murtaugh (sophomore-business administration) were found not to have won.

Thompson explained that a glitch in the University Testing Services software system for paper ballots used by the commission this year significantly decreased the number of votes tallied for the town senate positions.

The system this year included paper ballots and online voting. UTS scans all of the scantrons, the paper ballots, creating a file on the computer. It then combines that file with the online voting file. The error in software was in the combining of the two.

"The original intent of this system was to supplement the paper ballots," Thompson said.

"Everything has been fixed. If we decide to use this method next year, it's fixed," he added.

The ballots for the town senate section were the only ballots that had problems because they had the option to pick multiple candidates.

The presidential/vice presidential tickets were not affected.

"We were worried with the low number of votes for senate, now we're not worried," Thompson said.

After the commission investigated the system and found the glitch, the vote totals went up dramatically, for all candidates. The top-winning senate position saw a more than 500-vote increase after the second tallying.

"We were able to retrieve previously disregarded votes," Thompson said.

All of the paper ballots submitted into the computer were still in the system.

Because of the discrepancies with the senate ballots, some senate candidates said they would possibly contest the elections.

Acting Chief Justice of the USG Supreme Court Carrie Tendler ordered an official Judicial Injunction of certifying the USG/ARHS/UPAC election results to allow for challenges until midnight on Sunday.

This injunction would give any candidate that felt necessary to contest the results of the election more time to do so. The original deadline to file a challenge was last night, when the results were to be certified.