Voting for USAC begins tonight

Undergraduate student government elections begin this week, and for the second year, the elections board will be using a ranked-choice voting system to choose candidates.

Students will be able to vote from tonight at 7 p.m. until Thursday at 7 p.m.

Elections Board Chair Kyle Kleckner said the ballot will be available for preview on MyUCLA starting at 9 a.m. through a link at the top of the Web site.

The ranked-choice voting system allows students to rank all of the candidates for each office. There is a “cutoff” for the positions of president and general representative in which the bottom-ranked candidates will be eliminated and their votes redistributed among the remaining candidates.

For president the cutoff is the person in last place, and for general representative, the bottom two candidates will be eliminated.

Students will also be able to vote for The Green Initiative Fund referendum which would raise student fees by $4 and use the money to expand environmental projects at UCLA.

The online system of voting was introduced last year, and Kleckner said he believes the system worked well and facilitated higher voter turnout.

“Last year the turnout was 31 percent of the student body. Typically it’s around 20 percent or so,” Kleckner said.

Bruins United presidential candidate Matt Sandler said in the past it has been difficult to get students involved, but he thinks the effort put forward by the elections board and nominees should translate into a high turnout.

“We’ve been campaigning for a month, getting our proposals together, which hopefully will translate into a well-received election by the student population,” Sandler said.

Homaira Hosseini, presidential candidate for Students First!, said though there might be some difficulties when a new system is implemented, the fundamentals of the election process remain the same.

“I’m (confident that) if students go and support who they want, everything will work out,” Hosseini said.

Both Sandler and Hosseini said the elections are students’ opportunity to voice their concerns with USAC and affect the choices their student body takes for the next year.

With a budget of almost $3 million created entirely from student fees, Kleckner said the voting process comes down to how students want their money to be used.

“I encourage students to vote because their student fees are going to these offices, and they have a vote to decide how these fees will be spent,” Kleckner said.