Editorial: USAC should keep voting simple for students

With the goal of making the council better reflect the varied opinions of the campus community, members of the Undergraduate Students Association Council plan to vote Tuesday on changing the way students elect their representatives.

The plan is to change the process to either a single transferable vote system, STV, or an instant runoff vote, IRV, both of which would lead to more proportional representation on the council ““ an effort we applaud.

In the current runoff system, there are two rounds of elections: In the first round, a candidate must earn more than 50 percent of the vote in order to win, otherwise the top two candidates in that race face off in the second round.

This is where it gets complicated. USAC is structured in such a way that there are seven commissioner positions, a president, an internal vice president, an external vice president and three general representatives.

Everyone running for a general representative position is put in the same candidate pool, and the top three are elected to fill the three slots.

With either of the proposed changes to the election process, the second-round runoff elections would be eliminated and voters would be able to rank the candidates according to their preference rather than making one vote in the first round and then another in the runoff.

The only differences between STV and IRV are in the way the votes are tabulated and redistributed.

But STV is too complicated for students and candidates to feel comfortable enough with how the election process works.

With an STV system, students rank candidates by preference, and if a highly ranked candidate from a voter’s ballot does not win, that vote is transferred to the next candidate using special parameters that juggle a predetermined winning threshold and a transfer of surplus votes to all candidates left over.

If USAC votes to implement the STV system, the council runs the risk of deterring students from voting and may encounter problems with candidates who do not have a thorough understanding of the election process. This could call into question the results or breed distrust of the council both from voters and candidates.

The problem with STV is that it is so confusing of a system it gets people so muddled in vote distributions that it would not be the best move for USAC if their goal is to get more people involved and voting.

With this, the board recommends USAC keep it simple and accessible and choose the IRV system. In this method of voting, once candidates are eliminated from the race, their votes are automatically redistributed to other candidates based on how the voters ranked their choices. Using STV would just overcomplicate the voting process.

Councilmembers have argued the STV system may be technically more fair and representative than the IRV system, but either would provide ““ at least theoretically ““ a more proportional council.

Last year’s council should be given credit for developing and passing an election reform plan, but they were not able to implement their proposed system in time for last year’s election season. This year’s council faces the task of voting on implementing the specifics of the new system on Tuesday.