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The Student Association passed a bill Monday that switches from a majority-wins election system to ranked-choice voting. The bill details that ranked-choice voting will be used to elect the positions of president, vice president and comptroller.

Ranked-choice voting is a process in which a voter ranks their most preferred candidates. The bill states that if one candidate receives a majority of votes, then they will be declared the winner. If a winner is not chosen in the first round, there will be a second round of counting, during which the last candidate will be eliminated, and so on and so forth.

In the case of no candidate receiving a majority of votes, the person with the highest votes will be declared the winner pending ratification.

The bill also establishes a clause that if MySlice is technologically unable to provide ranked-choice voting, SA would then conduct the election via majority vote as it has previously.

David Bruen and Darnelle Stinfort, the president and vice president of SA respectively, said ranked-choice voting is a necessary addition to making the assembly more democratic and the election process smoother.

“Ranked-choice voting is really just a technical solution to a constitutional problem that we have,” Bruen said. “Our bylaws basically say that we have to get a simple majority to win, which is unreasonable if we have more than two candidates, which is pretty regular.”

Stinfort said she believes that through this new electoral process, students will be able to feel that their inputs are properly heard.

During the meeting, some assembly members voiced their confusion about the system and whether the SU electorate would feel the same way. Bruen said he’s confident that students would understand the system.

“Frankly, it’s a pretty straightforward thing to do. You just have to rank the candidates — and you don’t even have to do that. You can just rank your first one or two candidates. You don’t have to rank them all. Really, it’s not that complex,” Bruen said.

Another bill passed at the meeting condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. SA expressed its solidarity with the people of Ukraine and stated it supports students using their freedom of speech to speak out against the invasion.

The bill also stated the SA understands that this is a traumatic time for both Russian and Ukrainian students and said SA will offer any necessary assistance.

Stinfort said that the conflict has been devastating and scary to think of, considering the wealth of information available on social media.

“But also I think we need to remember, or keep in mind, that a lot of negative stereotypes have happened to other countries who have dealt with the same issue but may not have been given the same sympathy or help. I think that is something we need to recognize, as American students and as global citizens, to have empathy for every country going through something similar like this,” she said. “We are with the Ukrainians and the Russians who are against the war as well.”

Bruen also voiced his concern with the recent invasion of Ukraine.

“It’s devastating to think that there are people in classes with us, that we represent, that are struggling with their family or their mental health because of this,” Bruen said.

Anna Ginelli, the speaker pro tempore of the assembly, hosted and conducted the meeting due to the absence of speaker of the assembly William Treloar — the first time a woman has run an SA meeting since 2019, Ginelli said. Treloar attended the meeting via Zoom.

Published on March 1, 2022 at 12:04 am

Contact Danis: dwcammet@syr.edu