Student Congress should promptly pass a bill aiming to eliminate the need for runoff student body president elections.
Under current election procedures, if no candidate receives a majority of the vote on election day, voters have an opportunity to choose between the two candidates with the highest number of votes in a subsequent election held one week later.
A recently introduced bill seeks to eliminate the need for a runoff election, and reveal an immediate winner with the implementation of Instant Runoff Voting. IRV is a process where voters rank candidates, including write-in candidates, in order of preference.
Voters can rank as many or as few candidates as they like, meaning they don’t need to list preferences for all candidates, instead just the ones they support. In the instance that no candidate receives a majority, the last place candidate would be removed from the ballot, and those who listed that candidate as their first preference would have their second preference counted instead.
Student Congress would do well to follow the number of institutions, including Duke University and N.C. State University, who already use IRV in student government elections. Student Congress actually passed a bill to implement IRV in 2010, but it was vetoed by then-Student Body President Jasmin Jones.
The change could effectively pay for itself, as its cost of $170 is equal to the amount the two candidates are compensated for additional campaign expenditures for the runoff election. It would be a financially savvy method at providing instant results.
Using the IRV system would simplify the voting process and encourage students to vote in a one-time easily accessible election.
