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California Aggie
Choice Voting increases
meaning of votes
By Sonny Mohammadzadeh
November 25, 2003
Nov. 25, 2003 Two weeks ago, UC Davis
experienced its firstever Choice Voting election as mandated by the
Choice Voting Amendment, which was passed by 67 percent of voters in
winter 2003. I give many thanks to Creative Media and the ASUCD
Elections Committee for doing a great job with the election.
Choice Voting is a ranked voting system based on the
principles of proportional representation. What do I mean by this?
Any system used in a representative democracy, such as ASUCD, must
satisfy the following principles: majority rule and a maximization
of representation. Maximization of representation is equivalent to a
minimization of wasted votes (votes that do not elect anybody). The
old voting system satisfied neither of these while Choice Voting
satisfies both.
There are theoretical proofs to support this
claim, but here I will introduce some statistical evidence. In the
past five elections before Choice Voting, the average percentage of
wasted votes was approximately 53.7 percent. That means that in
those elections, more than half of all total votes ended up doing
nothing. It's as if more than half of those who voted were
completely ignored by the system which we had entrusted to represent
us.
Now compare this to the data from this past Choice
Voting election. A simple calculation shows that 87 percent of all
total votes ended up electing somebody. Thus, not only do we finally
have a voting system which guarantees majority rule, but it also has
an incredibly low number of wasted votes. We can now finally rest
assured that the senate elected is truly much more representative of
student voters.
Unfortunately, there have been
misconceptions of what Choice Voting's effect and purpose are. For
example, many think that the purpose of Choice Voting is to elect
independents. This thought is flatout false. The purpose of Choice
Voting is to elect a more representative student government than our
old voting system and, hence, it is a major advantage for all
voters.
It does not give independents an advantage over
others; it simply makes the playing field level. The fact that no
independents were elected this quarter says almost nothing about
Choice Voting, but it says volumes about the effectiveness of
independent campaigns this quarter.
The second misconception
is that a "confusing" voting system such as Choice Voting deters
voters and will decrease voter turnout. This argument is illogical
because the only "confusing" thing about Choice Voting is how the
votes are tallied. Knowing how to rank preferences, I would guess,
is not "confusing" for a college student. But understanding how
votes are tallied is not a prerequisite to being able to vote
meaningfully. When people vote in any election, all they expect is
that their vote will count toward electing their candidates. It
doesn't matter whether or not they rank, bullet, or anything else.
The fact that this election had a lower voter turnout than
some previous elections says more about the quality and visibility
of candidates than about the voting system used. In fact, in the
long run, once people start realizing that under Choice Voting their
vote is more important and meaningful than with the old voting
system, I feel we will see a gradual increase in voter turnout.
As I've mentioned, the objectives of Choice Voting are to
elect a more representative student government than the old voting
system could. Statistical evidence proves this, making Choice Voting
an extremely important factor in the health of ASUCD. Of course,
please do not take my word for it. Do your own independent
statistical analyses of the past elections to convince yourself that
under Choice Voting we can finally call ourselves a truly
representative democracy.
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