UW Students use Instant Runoff Voting

Editor's Note: This is an excerpt from McBride's article in the Daily on the University of Washington Seattle campus.

By Sonia McBride
May 12, 2008

Students will have the opportunity to get into the civic spirit because ASUW elections start today. The election will run through Wednesday night at 11:59 p.m., and results will be announced Thursday at approximately 7 p.m. in the HUB second floor lounge. the results will also be posted and posted online.

Candidates have been officially campaigning since 6 a.m. on April 21.

“It’s a rough experience,” said ASUW vice president Sam E. Al-Khoury. “It’s a very difficult job interview — it’s all a test.”

This year’s candidate turnout is much higher than last year’s elections, when many of the candidates had no opponents.

There are five candidates for ASUW president alone, all of whom have spent $1875 dollars on campaigning.

A Catalyst survey will be utilized for voting. Voters will rank the candidates in order of preference and be able to write in candidates as well. Instant runoff voting (IRV) will be used to calculate the winner.

All of the first place rankings will be counted, and a winner will be announced if a candidate has 50 percent of the vote or more. If not, counting will move to all of the voters’ second place preferences and so on, Al-Khoury said.

Many of the candidates are running with a ticket, or a group of students who hope to gain office together.

These include Dawg Life, VisionUW, Your Voice UW and DEFinitiveUW.

The results from the first day of voting will be a good barometer for how the rest of the election will play out, presidential candidate Rob Barnum-Reece said.