USG handbook inconsistent with constitution

USG president Connor Diemand-Yauman ’10 said in an e-mail Tuesday evening that both organizations will go through the process of revising their governing documents in the near future.

The USG senate is currently considering amending the constitution to resolve the inconsistencies, but doing so would then make it inconsistent with CPUC bylaws, which mandate that U-Councilors be elected using the single transferable vote (STV) formula. The handbook distributed Sunday said U-Councilors would be elected by approval voting, rather than STV, and also stated that candidates for the U-Council need 50 undergraduates to sign their petition. The CPUC charter dictates that candidates only need 25 signatures and mandates that U-Councilors be elected using the STV formula.

“Regarding the number of signatures required to run for a position on the U-Council, we inherited an error from previous administrations, and after an outside source noticed the error, our elections reform project has been working to bring attention to it,” Diemand-Yauman ’10 said.

“The senate has decided as of this past meeting to replace STV with approval voting,” he continued. “We have concluded, based on our research as well as advice from trusted experts, that approval voting is a better way for voters to express their choices than STV.”

The STV process traditionally employs a ballot that allows voters 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.

Under the new system, known as “approval voting,” voters would indicate approval of any number of candidates for the position by selecting a check box next to the candidates’ names. For class senators, the candidates with the two greatest numbers of approvals will be elected. For U-Councilors, the candidates with the 10 greatest number of approvals will be elected.

“We … made as much progress towards a constitutional amendment to reflect this change as we could, but an amendment requires the senate to vote in favor of it at two consecutive meetings,” Diemand-Yauman explained of the switch to approval voting. “We have every indication that the USG Senate will do so next week, so there will only be a discrepancy in these documents for one week … In addition to these revisions to the USG constitutions, we will also have to go through the process of revising the CPUC charter as well.”

In May 2008, USG officials acknowledged that the spring 2007 U-Council election violated both CPUC bylaws and the USG constitution by not employing the STV algorithm.

Efforts to change the USG constitution also include efforts to clarify the USG president’s spending power, Diemand-Yauman said.

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“Previously, the constitution was very vague in regards to the president’s spending power, giving my position the ability to approve all expenditures less than $1000 without involving the Senate in any way,” he explained. “I thought it was extremely important that we make the spending practices of the President and other USG officers much more transparent, in order to ensure accountability and proper management of funds. No president should be able to spend $1000 without having to answer to anyone.”