USG election process confuses voters

Correction Appended

Several members of the USG expressed confusion at last night’s USG Senate meeting about changes in the election process for U-Councilors, concerned that neither they nor the student body was informed of the change before voting began yesterday at noon.

“I was a little surprised when I logged on to vote,” U-Councilor Maria Salciccioli ’09 said. “I sent an e-mail out to my friends saying they could vote for 10 people [like last year], and then they couldn’t. We weren’t told about it.”

In USG elections for at least five years before last spring, voters were asked to list their top three preferences for U-Council positions. In May 2007, the USG changed the system to allow voters to rank their top 10 preferences since there are 10 seats on the U-Council.

“Last year was an aberration,” USG president Josh Weinstein ’09 said. “I thought it might be wise to do it the way it was done for the last five years.”

This year, however, voters were asked to rank only their top two — rather than three — preferences for U-Councilor, similar to the way class senators are selected.

“For about the past five years at least, the process has been a single transferable ballot,” explained Weinstein, who served as senior elections manager last year. Current USG senior elections manager Braeden Kepner-Kraus ’10 was not in attendance at the meeting.

In accordance with the bylaws of the Council of the Princeton University Community, U-Councilors are elected using the single transferable vote formula. The process traditionally employs a ballot that allows the voter to rank candidates in order of preference. When the ballots are counted, any candidate receiving the necessary quota of first-preference votes is awarded a seat.

The quota for this elections formula is traditionally calculated by first adding one to the total number of votes, then dividing by number of seats available plus one and then adding one.

Votes received by a winning candidate in excess of the quota are transferred to other candidates according to the second preference marked on each voter’s ballot.

Any candidate who then achieves the necessary quota is also awarded a seat. This process is repeated, with subsequent surpluses also being transferred until all the remaining seats have been awarded.

Salciccioli suggested that there should be as many opportunities to vote as there are seats open, and that the current system could technically end without the election of 10 new U-Councilors.

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Many USG members said they still didn’t completely understand the process, and Weinstein said that confusion arises every election cycle and that the USG will study possible reform measures.

“It is something that I thought we needed to address when I was an elections manager,” Weinstein said, “but not in the middle of elections.”

“You get one vote for the entire U-Council,” Weinstein said of the single transferable voting procedure. “I thought that was really silly.”

“It’s definitely something we have been, and will continue, to look in to,” he added.

Before discussing concerns about the election, U-Councilors Liz Rosen ’10 and Kevin McGinnis ’11, and Undergraduate Life Committe Chair Arthur Levy ’10 presented preliminary results from the USG’s student survey on campus recreation, the full results of which are detailed in a separate article.

Weinstein also informed the convened USG members that he had forwarded them a link to an article in The Times of Trenton on the assault and kidnapping of a freshman woman. U-Councilor Davion Chism ’09 then requested that the matter be discussed off the record, after which those assembled discussed the matter for roughly 10 minutes.

Frosh-Soph Council member Kate Huddleston ’11 then updated the group on proposed upgrades to the online Independent Student Guide. Huddleston said the site, which hasn’t been updated since 2004, provides information for students who are or might become independent.

“Our plan is to have the site up and running by the end of the [school] year,” she said. “People who are thinking over the summer about what they are going to do next year can go on the site if they choose to.”

USG vice president Mike Wang ’10 also updated the group on a USG history compilation project for which members have been compiling the work of every USG administration since its founding in 1982.

Weinstein stressed that the project will significantly improve the student government’s institutional memory.

Toward the end of the meeting, Student Groups liaison Jordan Blashek ’09 announced the authorization of new student organizations, including a Chinese theater group, a Bulgarian honor society and a Princeton fishing club.

Projects Board co-chair Will Wallace ’09 also updated the group on the latest round of funding distributed to various student groups.

This article originally identified Arthur Levy '10 as a U-Councilor, when he is in fact the Undergraduate Life Committee chair. The Daily Princetonian regrets the error.