Thought the 2000 Gore-Bush election fiasco was bad? What about the still-undecided bare-knuckles boxing match between Al Franken and Senator Norm Coleman for a Minnesota Senate seat? The United States has had its share of election muck-ups, and understandably so, given its large population. The Georgetown University Student Association has nearly equaled this polling chaos in recent years—a rather embarrassing fact, given the relatively small scale upon which it operates.
GUSA’s upcoming election will be held on February 24, but the organization is already considering reforms to its electoral process. The Student Association hopes to avoid the confusion and skewed results that plagued last year’s election and forced GUSA to hold a special run-off vote. Instead of abandoning the instant runoff system, which allows voters to more fully express their preferences than would a simple plurality system, GUSA should take a few measures to smooth out procedural kinks and guarantee that election results will reflect voters’ preferences.
First, GUSA should create clear instructions to ensure voters realize that they are only to rank candidates whom they actually support. This might mean voting for just one candidate, or ranking several.
Second, GUSA should devise a system whereby the order in which candidates’ names appear on the online ballot is randomized for each individual voter. This would avoid the situation in which a candidate listed first on the ballot might receive a disproportionately larger number of votes than the others—as happened in the 2008 election—thus skewing the results.
Lastly, GUSA should require that candidates submit a 100-150 word platform, which would appear under the candidate’s name on the voting page. Doing so would aid in closing the vast information gap regarding the candidates’ views that, unfortunately, the campaigns themselves rarely address.
As chaotic as their 2008 election was, GUSA does not need to reinvent the wheel to avoid similar blunders this year. With a little clarity, some technical touch-ups, and a bit more information, GUSA can easily streamline its electoral process, thereby restoring legitimacy to its operations and giving GUSA members time to address more important issues.
