Plurality v Majority Voting

The battle over which governance practices are best keeps on going. Recently, USG amended their election bylaws where all races will be decided by plurality. Before, candidates running for USG Officer positions (President, VP-Development;Finance;Academic Affairs;Public Relations) were decided by majority. The aforementioned election format has been in place for probably decades.

The reasons for changing the election rules might have ranged from choosing plurality voting because it is the most common winner method to avoiding the need to waste time and energy to conduct runoff elections for any of the officer positions.

A bit of overview between the plurality and majority methods. Plurality voting is the most common winner method used in the world today. Basically, the candidate that receives the most votes win. Majority voting means a candidate wins if he/she receives at least 50% of the votes. If none of the candidates do so, then a runoff election is held between the two candidates that had the most votes cast.

I ran for VP Finance for the 1999-2000 year and fortunately I won unopposed. I would still prefer the majority voting method for the officer positions because of the importance of electing the proper candidate for such a high-level position. In most cases, we have had 3-4 candidates run for an officer position, and one candidate managed to acquire the necessary majority threshold to win the election. Before I ran for VP Finance, I did run for VP Academic Affairs. I managed to secure a plurality of the votes, but I did not attain a majority victory. In the runoff, I lost to the candidate that received the second most votes after me. I was not really unhappy about the loss nor was I upset that I managed to get the most votes in the first round, but lost in the second round.

I believed that majority voting for the officers gave them a special place in our student governance structure. It seems quite difficult to comprehend if you had five candidates running for USG President, and a person won the election with only 25% of the vote. It can only be a proper result if the candidate is preferred by a majority of the student body, rather than the plurality of the minority.

Some may argue that the plurality method works well in our congressional and senatorial races, but we are talking about a two-party system which bascially ensures that most of the votes cast will be for the top two candidates (Republican or Democrat). In a few places, you may see an independent third-party candidate win. Plus, in a substantial number of races the candidate that won the plurality of the votes also won a majority of the ballots.

My concern is that plurality voting gives the advantage to certain groupings in the student body to take over the government. While I am sure it would not happen, the possiblity is there. Certain groups can ally together to ensure that their candidates will win the election. Since there is no worry to attaining that 50%, all you can do is to get a few more votes than the other candidates, and you're set. How can a student feel confident if a person that won USG VP of Development with only 19% of the vote? It just does not feel right.

If we are so interested in plurality voting, why not amend the criteria that is set to amending the USG bylaws or the constitution? Why is there a need for two-thirds approval? Why does it take a two-thirds vote to recall a USG rep or officer? I am confused to how we make it to so easy to elect a person, we make it so difficult to remove that person or change our governing document.

Plurality makes the most sense if there are only two candidates running for a position. It does not work out for all if you get a low voter turnout and a winning candidate that does not command a true majoritarian mandate of the student body. While we do have several candidates running for the class officer positions, they do not exact more importance than the officer positions.

USG should review its electoral format and reinstate the majority voting method or something similar to the USG officer positions for the next executive elections.

Regards,

James Chang '00
Former VP Finance 99-00
Magnolia House Rep 98-99
Constitution Chair 97-98
Tyler House Rep 96-98