Guest Opinion — The failure of plurality voting
By Sonny Mohammadzadeh
February 13, 2003 - Imagine the following: you’re a teacher at Davis Senior High School, and UC Davis has just announced that it will give scholarships to the top six students from your classes. The only catch is that the university will decide who the top six students are based only on their best grades: the number of As they have.
You quickly realize that this is an unfair system because it means a student who received 10 As and 12 Fs from you will be chosen over somebody you gave 9 As and 13 Bs. Any other teacher or student will agree, that this is ridiculous. By ignoring all other information relevant to a student’s performance — all grades besides A — the six scholarship recipients will not necessarily be the six most deserving students. Fortunately, our grading system uses a much more rational system. A system that 1) takes into account all relevant information and 2) uses a weight ranking system (A is better than B, which is better than C…).
Unfortunately, our current school, state and national voting systems all work like the dysfunctional example I gave for grading. The system is called plurality voting, and the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Jamaica are the only democratic countries with high human rights rankings that still use this archaic system.
For example, in our school elections, a voter can only bullet one president and six senators. This is analogous to the teacher giving out As to students. But just like in the grading example, a wealth of important information is lost in the system. What grades do the voters give all the other candidates? Of the candidates the voters do pick, do they really value them exactly the same as the system candidates? Because of this lack of information, the current voting system has no way of guaranteeing that it will elect the six most deserving candidates, meaning the six that the collective voters really wanted.
That’s why a group of electoral reform advocates have put the Choice Voting Amendment on the winter quarter ballot. Analogous to our GPA system, choice voting allows a voter to express opinion on all candidates and to give certain candidates more weight than others. This extra information allows for a counting formula that is mathematically proven to represent the diversity of the voters’ needs more accurately than our current system.
This amounts to electing a senate that is in tune with a much broader palette of student views and needs. This will lead to legislation that benefits more students, which in turn leads to voters having more confidence in their government. That’s why countries that use voting systems based on proportional representation tend to have voter turnout in the 75 to 70 percent range. Our current governor was elected by less than half of those who voted, which was less than half of those even eligible to vote!
The definition of a democratic government is a government that has been elected freely and equally by all its citizens. If we continue to maintain a voting system that clearly fails to represent the equal will of the people, then we are, by definition, not a democracy. That scares me. Not only are certain people always trying to sabotage our democratic ways, but undemocratic principles are actually institutionalized in our faulty voting system.
I call on all students who care about democracy to vote “Yes” on the Choice Voting Amendment, and to furthermore get involved in electoral reforms in your communities, workplaces, et cetera. It’s only a matter of time before electoral reform sweeps the nation, and I guarantee the spark is going to come from grassroots efforts in universities and communities.
To learn more about voting reform, visit or To learn about the mathematical specifics of different voting methods, check out the book Chaotic Elections: A Mathematician Looks at Voting.
Choose democracy. Vote yes on choice voting.
“The right of voting for representation is the primary right by which other rights are protected.” — Thomas Paine.
The right Choice
With the Choice Voting Amendment on February’s ballot, students will have the chance to make ASUCD elections more democratic and flexible.
CVA will do this by instituting a system called instant runoff voting, or IRV. With our current system of runoff voting, a first election is held for all candidates. If no candidate receives a majority outright, a second “runoff” election is held a week later between the two top vote-getters. This process is wasteful and time-consuming.
With IRV, voters rank candidates in order of preference 1, 2 and 3. If their first preference does not win, their vote instantly goes toward their second choice, so on and so forth until a single candidate receives a simple majority.
For example, during the 2000 elections, one could freely vote Ralph Nader as his first choice and Al Gore as your second choice. Since Nader didn’t receive a majority, he would be knocked out of the race and his votes would go to Gore. Thus, IRV encourages democracy by removing the so-called “spoiler” problem.
In addition, IRV would discourage negative campaigning and force candidates to focus on issues. Why? Because competing candidates would be interested in getting voters’ second or third preferences. Such candidates would not be likely to get these votes if they are constantly bashing a voter’s favorite candidate.
Instant runoff voting: more democratic, more efficient and more flexible. Support this system by supporting the Choice Voting Amendment.
MATTHEW STEWART
UC Davis
California Aggie
Senate schooled in proposed voting system
Supporters of Choice Voting Amendment lobby at Thursday's meeting
By Hilary Costa
Aggie Staff Writer
February 03, 2003 - With no legislation on the agenda at Thursday night's
ASUCD Senate meeting, the senate took time to hear a 20-minute
presentation by supporters of the Choice Voting System, an electoral
procedure that students will evaluate in the winter 2003 ASUCD election.
Sonny Mohammadzadeh and Chris Jerdonek spoke about the merits of their
proposed voting system, which is also referred to as Instant Runoff
Voting for presidential/vice presidential elections, and Single
Transferable Voting for senate elections.
If their ballot measure is passed by 60 percent of the voters, it will
institute a ranking system in ASUCD elections similar to those already
implemented at Stanford University, UC Berkeley, California Institute of
Technology and many other universities across the country.
"In your opinion, what system truly represents the people better: A system
that allows minorities to elect all or a majority of senators, or that
truly, proportionally represents students accurately?" Mohammadzadeh
asked.
He noted that Choice Voting would eliminate the cost of runoff
presidential elections, which have occurred at UC Davis five times in the
past nine years.
In explaining the system's benefits on a larger scale, Mohammadzadeh said
that Choice Voting would have prevented the controversy over the 2000
U.S. Presidential election.
"It was actually a flaw of the system that caused Al Gore to lose,"
Mohammadzadeh said. "It's not Ralph Nader's fault. He has every right to
run."
Mohammadzadeh and Jerdonek also presented slides outlining the benefits of
Choice Voting, which they said included deterring negative
campaigning, since a candidate wants a voter to at least rank him second,
if not first.
"Of the 40 or so full-fledged democracies in the world, there are only
five that still use the winner-take-all system, such as the United
States," Mohammadzadeh said.
A series of slides also outlined the STV process for electing a
proportionally representative senate, using an example from a Cambridge,
Mass. city council election. In this scenario, a candidate's votes in
excess of a preordained, proportional minimum are distributed to the
voters' second-choice candidates using an algorithm formula until the top
candidates have equal representational support.
After their presentation had finished, those present used public
discussion time to ask Mohammadzadeh and Jerdonek follow-up questions
about the system's merits and to comment on their support - or lack
thereof - for the system.
Junior Kenneth Bloom spoke against the voting system, saying the language
contained in the ballot measure does not define the runoff methods
clearly enough, and that IRV has technical flaws. He used a whiteboard to
draw an example of a case where a candidate with more votes actually
ended up losing an election.
Mohammadzadeh, however, later refuted Bloom's example.
"These situations don't tend to be realistic," he said. "When you have
that many people voting, it's pretty damn hard to know how to rig the
system."
Ethnic and Cultural Affairs Commission Chair Atul Nair said he favored
amending the ASUCD election system, and that Choice Voting would
promote a "diversity of ideas" and make ASUCD elections "less binary."
But while some senators, as well as Nair, said they believed Choice Voting
would eliminate the binary ticket system that dominates ASUCD
elections, Mohammadzadeh said he did not think it would "affect the ticket
system much." Berkeley, he said, still has a "strong" two-slate system
that uses Choice Voting.
As the question-and-answer session continued, however, some senators and
commission chairs sitting around the table had tired of the hour-long
session, and wished to return to regular senate business.
"You should educate yourself and not force people to come and educate us,"
said Bob Gill, chair of the Academic Affairs Commission, advising the
senators to visit websites posted by Mohammadzadeh in order to obtain more
information.
--
The Choice Voting Amendment:
A more flexible, democratic system of voting
By MATTHEW STEWART
January 07, 2003 - The Green Party at UC Davis has proposed the Choice
Voting Amendment for this February's ballot, ushering in some important
reforms in how we elect our student representatives.
Under our current system of runoff voting, a first election is held
for ASUCD president. If no candidate receives a majority of the
votes, a costly and exhausting second runoff election is held a
week later so that a clear majority can be determined. This
prolonged ritual is an unnecessary hassle for students, faculty and
candidates.
To solve this dilemma, the Choice Voting Amendment would
establish instant runoff voting, or IRV. This is the same runoff
system as our current system except for one major difference: the
voters can indicate their runoff choices all at once, thus bypassing
the second election altogether.
IRV has the added advantage of making elections more flexible
and democratic while also solving the so-called "spoiler" problem.
For example, during the 2000 presidential election Ralph Nader
was blamed for taking votes away from Al Gore and helping to
elect Bush. With IRV, voters would have had the freedom to vote
Nader as their first choice and Gore as their second choice.
During the runoff, Nader's votes would have been immediately
re-tabulated and forwarded to Gore.
The Choice Voting Amendment also would institute a system
known as proportional representation, or PR, for the ASUCD
Senate. In the current senatorial elections, six people get elected
in a winner-take-all system. This means that it is possible for the
student government to get elected by only a fraction of the voters.
This also means that large portions of the student voice could go
unheard - a problem that has occurred in two of the last four
elections.
With PR, every candidate must earn a specific number of votes in
order to get elected. Once that threshold has been reached by a
candidate, all surplus votes are then automatically forwarded to
each voter's next favorite choice. This process continues until
every vote has been distributed to saturation. Thus, all students
will be represented proportionately to the votes they have cast.
MATTHEW STEWART is a student at UC Davis.
Misinformed editorial
I would like to thank The Aggie for covering the Choice Voting Amendment on Nov. 22, and the editorial Nov. 26. However, I would like to point out a misunderstanding of the amendment by the editors.
The editorial states that “senate candidates would have one vote to cast for an entire slate, rather than for individual members of those slates.” This is not true. Our proposed system would allow voters to rank candidates for both executive and senate elections. Therefore, this system does not depend on “multiple, established political parties” as was suggested in the editorial.
Furthermore, the amendment is not a “complex mixture” or “two very different voting systems” as the editorial suggests. In fact, the Choice Voting Amendment would implement the same voting system for both elections, the only difference being the number of people who get elected. This is why we have included them together.
Also, we do not intend to convince voters to support the system simply because other governments use it. Rather, we mention schools such as UC Berkeley, UCLA and Harvard as points of interest for voters to look into if they would like to learn more about the effectiveness and or credibility of the system.
SONNY MOHAMMADZADEH
Choice Voting Amendment coordinator
More Aggie misinformation
First, I want to thank The Aggie for bringing attention to the Choice Voting Amendment, but I also want to say I was a little disappointed because the opinion is about something the Green Party is not proposing.
Students would not vote for a slate in the ASUCD Senate elections under choice voting. They would actually do the same thing they would do for president, and that’s rank the candidates they support. This same common ranking system we’re proposing is known as choice voting. In both cases — presidential and senate — the voters would simply rank the candidates they support.
It is simpler for the voters to have a single, consistent voting system for both president and senate. For if choice voting were to be implemented only for president and not for senate, or vice versa, voters would be using two different voting systems during the winter election — for one they would be ranking, and for the other they wouldn’t.
The problem with the current senate system is that a small fraction of the voters can elect the entire senate. That’s why the current plurality system used by ASUCD is known as a “winner-take-all” system. This effect happened in two out of the last four elections — in both fall 2001 and winter 2001. Even after those elections, in which a single slate swept the outcome, we still saw a great deal of divisiveness and “partisan” bickering in ASUCD.
With choice voting, slate ideologies will be de-emphasized because independent candidates will have a better chance. The elections can focus more on issues and less on whose “side” the candidate is on.
Given all the circumstances, I think there really is a good reason to have the students vote on choice voting for all ASUCD elections at once, and not just some of them.
CHRIS JERDONEK