Students are voting this week in the undergraduate student government elections, but many have little knowledge of the implications of the new ranked-choice voting system and how their votes will be counted.
And some say the new system could affect the outcome of the election.
The Undergraduate Students Association Council voted in April 2006 to switch from a two-week election process with a primary and a runoff election to a system where students rank candidates in order of preference and votes are tabulated using a complex system of redistribution.
Ten of the council seats are decided using instant runoff voting, or IRV, which systematically eliminates the candidate with the least votes. Votes from ballots ranking that candidate first are then redistributed to remaining candidates according to the voter’s second choice. This process is repeated until one of the candidates has earned a majority of the votes and is declared the winner.
The three general representative seats on council are decided using a method known as single transferable voting, or STV.
Political science Professor Michael Thies said STV is almost the same as IRV, except that with STV, not only are the votes of the lowest-ranking candidate redistributed, but surplus votes from candidates who meet the majority threshold are also redistributed.
According to USAC President Marwa Kaisey, these changes were instituted because the STV system encourages proportional representation by making it more difficult for one slate to win all the seats in a multi-seat race.
She said it also allows students to vote their conscience by giving their first-choice vote to a favorite candidate who might not have a high likelihood of winning, since their second-choice vote can still be counted. “(One of the reasons for STV) is to let people vote their conscience, especially regarding independent candidates,” Kaisey said.
Thies said STV could potentially affect the outcome of the election through the redistribution of surplus votes from winners. For example, if a very popular candidate has a large surplus, this could allow voters to have a stronger influence over who wins the remaining seats than they would with a single vote.
“You can imagine if you have a really popular candidate, the redistribution of a large surplus could affect who wins the other seats,” he said.
But Thies added that trying to guess who might have won using a different electoral system does not always give a clear picture of the possible outcomes, since the way people cast their votes is influenced by their perceptions of the current system.
Thies said he was not sure STV would encourage proportional representation in student government elections since it is usually most effective toward this end in staunchly partisan systems. Instead, he suggested that increasing the number of seats available on council might be a more effective way to achieve proportionality.
“If you’re looking for proportional representation, what actually makes the system more proportional is having a greater number of seats. Instead of having three seats, have seven to make the (majority) threshold lower so smaller parties can win,” he said.
While the details of how the votes are counted are key to those involved in the election, some student voters said they had minimal understanding of the tabulation process and were confused by the ballot.
Andrina Schwartz, a third-year communication studies student who voted, said she does not understand the purpose of the rankings: “I thought in an election you either vote for someone or you don’t. I don’t know why we’re ranking.”
Dorothy Le, the campaign manager for Students First! Facilities commissioner candidate Angela Cheung, said understanding the implications of the rankings was a challenge for students.
“I don’t think people knew what the system was. It’s easy to rank (candidates), but people don’t know what the purpose of ranking them is,” she said.
Elections Board chairwoman and former Daily Bruin reporter Sandybeth Carrillo said part of the confusion might be due to the face that there are fewer candidates than usual this year. And since there are nine races with only one or two candidates running, voters were only asked to rank their choices for the presidential and general representative races.
Carrillo noted that basic information on how the ranked votes would be tallied was made available in the voting guide, which was sent to all students in a notice on the MyUCLA Web site.
“We specifically put information about the new voting system in the front of the guide so that students can understand how their votes will be counted,” she said.
Carrillo said she encouraged students to rank all the candidates for president and general representative, since each ranking can affect the election.