Runoff proposal to save ASI money



By Joseph Serna
Assistant City Editor
Online Forty-Niner


During the Associated Students Inc.’s elections students will vote on a referendum to decide whether or not the school will have instant run-off voting for future elections, a process that eliminates the need for a second round of voting in cases when no candidate receives a simple majority.

ASI Executive Director Richard Haller explained to the AS Senate in a recent meeting that instant run-off voting immediately chooses the winning candidate when none have won by a simple majority, thereby saving the corporation money.

Government Elections Commissioner Cortney Ronald said the elections committee has a $12,000 budget for this year’s election. Next week’s elections will have seven voting booths on campus. Although not all the booths will be reopened for the second round, ASI still has to pay people to work them and pay to print the extra ballots. She guessed the new process would save about $2,000.

“ It would save money for the poll workers and the ballots,” Ronald said.

Instant run-off voting works through a series of tallying ranked votes and dropping off the lowest vote-getter for each round. A candidate is victorious when he or she ends up with the majority.

If there were three presidential candidates in an instant run-off ballot, the student would get to rank the candidates, his or her first through third choice.

When the votes are totaled and the student body has not chosen a winner (first choice candidate) with a simple majority, the candidate who had the lowest total of first choice votes is eliminated from the running, consequently leaving two candidates.

A second round of voting now begins with the same ballots.

The votes each candidate received as the second choice are then added as a first choice vote, determining the winner.

If there still is no majority after the first two rounds, the votes for the third rank are added to determine the winner.

The process works with any number of candidates, each round eliminating the lowest vote-getter for the position until someone receives a majority of the votes through the ranking system, according to Haller.

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