This week, as students cast their TritonLink ballots for next year’s A.S. Council, they will be using the Single Transferable Vote system, which allows voters’ to rank A.S. executive and academic-division senator candidates in order of preference.
Although STV was implemented in 2007, this is the first A.S. election it will impact because last year’s races were largely unopposed ‘mdash; and there are still a few kinks in the system.
Under’ STV, in the event that a student’s first-choice candidate receives the fewest votes, that vote will be transferred to the student’s second-choice candidate; and so on, until any one candidate achieves simple majority with 50 percent plus one vote.
According to Associate Vice President of Athletic Relations Peter Benesch, the council switched to the STV system to encourage greater involvement in elections. Councilmembers felt students would be more inclined to vote for independent candidates if their votes would be transferred in the event of a loss, and that independent candidates would be more inclined to run for office if they felt students wouldn’t be deterred from supporting them.
At UCSD, STV voting will only be used to determine races in which candidates compete for one position. All races other than those for the four executive offices and academic-division senate seats will continue to be decided by the standard plurality system. Because candidates in those races will be competing for multiple spots ‘mdash; for instance, eight slots in the case of campuswide senator ‘mdash; the vote transfer becomes less clear.
‘It’s easier to abuse the system in these larger races,’ Benesch said. He cited cases of strategic lobbying at UC Berkeley, where candidates on larger slates campaign for specific rankings in order to manipulate a more favorable transfer of votes.
According to A.S. elections manager Frank Carroll, because withdrawn candidates couldn’t be removed from the ballot due to programming issues on TritonLink, they could impact the election results in STV races. Votes for withdrawn candidates are disregarded in plurality races, but because of STV’s ranking system, they could potentially affect final numbers.
‘We don’t really know the implications,’ Carroll said. ‘[Withdrawn candidates] could take votes away from a third-place candidate ‘hellip; It could screw up who [would] actually win.’
However, in the event that a withdrawn candidate garners enough votes to knock another candidate out of the race ‘mdash; thus influencing the transfer of votes and election results ‘mdash; Carroll said the elections committee could determine the proper STV winner by hand.
‘There’s no doomsday scenario except that it would be a pain in the butt,’ he said.
Carroll also hopes to adjust the election code so it remains consistent with university policy in the future. Currently, ‘dorm storming’ ‘mdash; going door-to-door through the resident halls to solicit students ‘mdash; is forbidden by university policy, but is left out of the election code. Because of this discrepancy, grievances regarding dorm storming are technically illegitimate. However, Carroll made a special ruling on March 31 that forbade the practice, and will entertain grievances should any violations occur.
Readers can contact Hadley Mendoza at [email protected].