Sam Saccone / Staff Photographer / ss324006@ohiou.edu

Senior Allie Stalter comforts ACT OU presidential candidate Mashur Rahman in Baker University Center after online voting complications were announced.

Online ballot problems affecting students in four residence halls delayed the selection of yesterday’s Student Senate election winners.

Students in Bromley, Bryan and Voigt halls and Scott Quadrangle were unable to vote between 8 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. because of a technical problem with the Web site, Board of Elections Chairman Micah Mitchell said in a prepared statement. Mitchell said he did not know exactly what the problem was and refused to comment further.

Mitchell and two Office of Information Technology employees deferred comment, and university spokeswoman Katie Quaranta refused to make anyone with knowledge of the problem available.

“It’s the election board’s problem,” Quaranta said.

The board will allow affected students to vote Tuesday and will announce the final results at 8 p.m. in Baker University Center. All four halls also experienced problems with last year’s electronic ballots.

E-mails will be sent to those students, informing them of the decision. Students who voted yesterday between 2:30 and 7 p.m. will not be able to vote again, according to Mitchell’s statement.

Senior Michael Adeyanju, presidential candidate for Ability and Accountability (AAA), said he was untroubled by the announcement, saying he is confident about his ticket and excited to see what happens.

“It just extends the campaign a couple days,” he said. “We’ve had 30 days. We can go four more.”

Action through Communication and Teamwork (ACT OU) presidential candidate, senior Mashur Rahman, said he and his party were not happy about the decision.

“Although the voting system was off for six hours, it was on for six hours,” he said. “We believe people who wanted to vote could have voted.”

Rahman said the extension would make it harder for his party to win because they have fewer candidates than the other parties and therefore fewer people to campaign.

“I think we really got the short end of the stick,” he said.

Junior Will Klatt, presidential candidate for The Birthday Party, said he was pleased by the decision to delay the announcement until all students voted, though it was a little nerve-wracking for him.

“I think what was at stake was the right of every student to cast a vote if they wanted,” he said.Candidates will be allowed to campaign normally until Tuesday.

Last year, a glitch prevented students living in the same four residence halls from voting for green senators. The 2007 Board of Elections used paper ballots to allow those students to vote for East and West Green senators. Wednesday,

Mitchell said the problem was fixed, and he expected the election to run smoothly.

— Kristina Hauptmann and Kelly Masterson contributed to this article