What a difference the rules make

Every spring University students head to the polls to decide on referenda and elect officials for a variety of organizations, such as Student Council, the Honor Committee, the University Judiciary Committee, class councils, and school councils. The University Board of Elections (UBE) is tasked with overseeing the elections, and as stated in its Rules and Regulations, UBE elections use an instant runoff process.

The process, which is based off the Hare system, requires voters to rank the candidates for each office from most preferred to least preferred. When the UBE tallies the votes, if no candidate has received a majority of the vote, the person who received the least number of votes is eliminated. The eliminated candidate’s supporters then have their votes redistributed to their second-choice candidate, and the process repeats until one candidate has received a majority of the vote, who is then declared the winner.

This system of voting made headlines due to the spring 2010 election for Third-Year Council Vice President. As this article in The Cavalier Daily shows, the race had four candidates: Abebe Kebede, Natalia Mercado, Chris Mullen, and Nitya Reddy. After the initial round of voting nobody had a majority, so Chris Mullen, the last-place candidate, was eliminated and his votes were redistributed. Still, nobody had a majority, so the next candidate with the fewest votes, Nitya Reddy, was eliminated and her votes were redistributed. The final round pitted Kebede against Mercado, and Mercado emerged as the victor by one vote – 664 to 663.

After the results were released Kebede considered challenging the results, particularly because in early rounds of the runoff process he had a plurality of the vote but he did not have a majority. Once candidates were eliminated and their votes were redistributed, however, Mercado had a majority and was declared the winner, even though it was only by one vote. Ultimately, with the UBE standing by the process and its results, Kebede conceded the race to Mercado.

The article’s ending does an excellent job summarizing this election’s lessons. One of the biggest problems with this electoral system is voters do not understand it in detail, which opens the door to skewed results. Moreover, Mercado believes that the system is “the most fair type of elections that we have at the University.” Is this really the case? Should the UBE consider switching to a different system?