The SGA will vote today to drastically change its election process. If passed, the bill would prevent a repeat of the costly and time-consuming runoff of last year.

Student Government Association government affairs committee chairman Eric Swalwell formally introduced the bill last week, calling for an instant-runoff voting system that would eliminate a second vote by allowing voters to rank candidates instead of choosing one.

"[IRV] is not black and white," Swalwell said. "It's a true, free and fair election."

Under current SGA guidelines, executive candidates need 40 percent of the vote to win, making it especially difficult to declare a winner when more than two candidates run for office. If candidates do not reach the 40 percent mark, a runoff election is held one week later.

In an instant-runoff election, each voter is given the opportunity to rank candidates in preferential order. If no candidate gets more than 50 percent of the vote, the candidate with the least first-choice votes is eliminated.

The ballots with the eliminated candidate listed as the first choice are reprocessed to the next-choice selection. The process would continue until a winner emerges with a majority vote. Historically, fewer people vote in runoffs, and instant-voting supporters say voting for a third-party candidate would no longer equate to throwing away a vote.

Although this process would essentially eliminate the chance of a "spoiler" candidate, Swalwell said the instant-runoff election actually helps additional challengers.

"IRV levels the playing field for third-party challengers," Swalwell wrote in a column in yesterday's Diamondback. "Because of a ranking system, voters will no longer feel their vote is wasted if they vote third party or independent."

The bill comes in the wake of last year's election, when SPANK SGA party presidential candidate Angela Lagdameo and vice president of campus affairs candidate Jeremy Bates won a runoff against Real Party candidates Micah Coleman and Ariel Oxman. Almost 6,400 people voted in the initial election, but only 3,490 voted in the runoff a week later.

Eric Olson, deputy director for the Center for Voting and Democracy and a College Park city councilman, campaigns across the country for instant-runoff elections. Schools currently using the instant-runoff election include the University of California at Berkeley, California Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Harvard, Stanford and Johns Hopkins universities, Olson said.

"IRV is a more democratic system because you get a majority winner with over 50 percent of the vote. People can express all of their preferences and don't have to come back to the polls the next week," Olson said.

The vote was originally scheduled for tonight, but was delayed because the registrar's office has not determined when the university's website could implement necessary changes.

University Courtyard legislator Francis Dacanay said the new system is a good alternative to holding a second election because it would save the candidates from the extra week of campaigning and exhaustion. "[IRV] is a way to solve that problem," he said.

Swalwell said he hopes the university could become a model for college elections across the country. Swalwell said Maryland would be the biggest university in the country to adopt the election process.

According to Swalwell, the software required for the new system would cost up to $1,000. Swalwell said the new software, which is sold by Voting Solutions company, would save the SGA and candidates money that would otherwise be spent on runoffs. Tomorrow's vote is only to affirm the organization's interest in an instant-runoff election, and will not bind the SGA to a contract with Voting Solutions, Swalwell said.