Contact: Max Harrington, Voting Task Force Chair
Daniel Watts, Voting Task Force Vice-Chair
La
Jolla, CA ��� The Associated Students (AS) government of UC San Diego
voted overwhelmingly at their meeting on March 12 to adopt instant
runoff voting (IRV) for AS elections. The decision was made after
hearing a presentation by the Voting Systems Task Force, which had
unanimously recommended IRV over nine other voting
systems.
Max
Harrington, a freshman majoring in Urban Studies, was the chair of
the task force and is a senator from
Eleanor
Roosevelt
College. ���After thoroughly debating
the ten different voting systems and after conducting a mock
election to gauge student reaction to our four top choices, the
Voting Task Force decided that IRV was the best option
available. The AS
heeded our call, and I���m proud to say that UCSD has now joined in a
growing movement which is seeking to re-democratize our
country.���
Under the IRV voting system, voters rank the candidates
in order of preference.
The votes for campus-wide positions such as President, the
Vice-Presidents, and the Commissioners are then tabulated in a way
that guarantees that the winner has the broadest base of support by
ensuring that he or she wins with a true majority (50% plus one vote
or more).
Georgia Kellogg, an
Eleanor
Roosevelt
College freshman, was an
At-Large member of the task force, which included an AS senator from
all six UCSD colleges as well as four at-large members from the
general student body.
���IRV�Ķ[is] a step in the right direction for increasing voter
turnout. In our surveys
students reported that they felt better represented by IRV than by
plurality and some students who haven���t voted in past elections even
said they would vote in future elections if IRV were
implemented.���
The
task force senators now plan to introduce legislation in all six
college councils, which would implement IRV for college-based
elections in addition to all-campus elections (which was already
approved by AS). The
Instant Runoff Voting measure had been supported across the
political spectrum on-campus; both the California Review, a
conservative student newspaper, and the UCSD Guardian, the main
student paper, had editorialized in support of IRV. The measure was also
officially endorsed by the UCSD Campus Greens, the College
Democrats, and the College Republicans.
Mike
Schoeck, Sixth College Freshman Senator, was also a member of the
task force. ���I think
that Instant Runoff Voting is the financially responsible choice
since it corrects the problems of runoffs in one system, promotes
maximized voter choice and better ensures majority rule.���
The
successful effort at UC San Diego is indicative of the voting-reform
movement���s growing accomplishments and visibility. A ballot initiative to
implement IRV at UC Davis was passed with 67% of students voting in
support in mid-February.
Similar electoral systems are already used at UC Berkeley,
Stanford, and Cal Tech, as well as many other universities across
the country. Growing
interest in voting reform has been seen among cities, counties, and
states as well; San Francisco became the largest city in the US to
adopt IRV with a successful initiative last November, and California
is one of several states currently considering bills to either
implement IRV at the state-wide level or allow local general-law
municipalities to adopt an alternative voting system on their
own.
