The planned method of next quarter’s A.S. elections is in jeopardy, according to reports that instant runoff voting may not be implemented in time on StudentLink because of other programming projects.

Instant runoff voting, a method that allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference, was added to the A.S. Election Bylaws in March 2003, and is scheduled to take effect in this year’s elections.

Mae W. Brown, assistant vice chancellor of admissions and enrollment services and chair of the StudentLink Advisory Committee, said that other projects have exhausted the programming resources that would be needed to implement the instant runoff voting on StudentLink this year.

StudentLink has run online A.S. elections in the past.

“”Given all of the projects that were already listed before this particular project, it was viewed … that there was just no way, given limited resources, that this could be even ranked at that point,”” Brown said.

According to Brown, other projects such as the Career Services student portfolio, online statement of legal residency and the new comprehensive MyUCSD Web portal are already straining programming resources.

The A.S. Council discussed the instant runoff voting implementation problems at its Jan. 7 meeting.

“”The A.S. should follow what its rules are. The rule of law, per se, with A.S. is that the elections will use the instant runoff voting system,”” A.S. President Jeremy Paul Gallagher said.

A.S. Elections Manager Tom Chapman said that if StudentLink cannot implement instant runoff voting in time for elections, the council will have to choose between four alternatives: work with StudentLink to collect the votes but not tabulate them, hire an outside company to run the entire election independently of StudentLink, conduct the election using paper ballots, or change the election bylaws back to a simple plurality system.

“”Jeremy [Gallagher] and I are pursuing further conversations with ways in which we can work with StudentLink, such as offering to pay for the programmers, or just [using] our own programmers, or potentially get some third-party Web site instead of StudentLink [to handle the election],”” Chapman said.

A straw poll taken at the A.S. meeting revealed strong council support for the use of instant runoff voting this year, even if it means conducting the election using paper ballots.

Eleanor Roosevelt College Junior Senator Carol Freire said that when the election bylaws were changed to include instant runoff voting, StudentLink officials informed the council that it would be “”no problem”” to implement the new system in time for this election cycle.

“”I’m not opposed to paper tallying … because I think it would be a step backward for A.S. [not to use instant runoff voting],”” Freire said.

In instant runoff voting, students rank candidates in order of preference. If a candidate receives more than 50 percent of the first-choice rankings, that candidate wins.

If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the first-place rankings, the candidate who received the fewest first-place rankings is eliminated. Each first-place vote for the eliminated candidate is transferred to the voter’s second choice. The process of elimination is repeated until a candidate receives over 50 percent of the first-place votes.

The A.S. Voting Task Force, which met regularly last year, examined 10 different voting systems and conducted a mock election to gauge student reaction to the task force’s top four choices, which led to their recommendation of instant runoff voting and its addition to the election bylaws.

Freire said that it’s not unusual for student governments to hire outside companies to run elections.

“”It would be better for us to just take it on ourselves, but if we can’t, then why not?”” Freire said.

A.S. StudentLink Advisory Committee Representative Vincent Pascual said that the first sign of trouble with StudentLink implementation came at a meeting over the summer.

“”[The committee] said, ŒWe won’t rank anything until we finish the current project batch,'”” Pascual said. “”I wish that the top members of the committee would have given a little more advance notice about this.””

Councilmembers are still negotiating with the administration to have instant runoff voting implemented this year. Chapman hopes a final decision on the election method will be made as soon as possible, but no later than fifth week of winter quarter.

“”If we have to go back to paper ballots, that’s what it is,”” Gallagher said. “”I don’t foresee that happening, but we need to follow our rules.””