Winter 2011 ASUCD Election

Notes

There is obviously a noticeable difference between the number of votes for Independents and the number of seats they gained. There seems to be evidence to justify combining FUQ with the Independents based on where votes were transfered and doing so would make the vote/seat distribution look more even: 35.8% of first round votes, 33.3% of Senate seats. Some of the evidence follows below.

Miguel Espinoza (FUQ) moved from 8th place in the first round to 5th place in the last round mainly from the transfer votes of eliminated Independent candidates and his single slatemate. Miguel started the election with 181 first place votes and gained 261.563 votes during the election. Of those 261.563 votes, 66.4% of them came from the elimination of Independent candidates and 17% came from his slatemate. That means 83.4% of the votes he gained came without the help of BOLD voters. In fact, if you eliminate all of the transfer votes he gained from BOLD candidates being elected or eliminated, and put them in the exhausted pile instead, he still would have ended up in 5th place in the final round.

Below are the Independent and FUQ candidates in the order they were eliminated. You can see that early in the election the elimination of an Independent or FUQ candidate tended to favor other Independent or FUQ (aka, non-BOLD) candidates. However, as the rounds went on votes began to transfer more evenly between BOLD and non-BOLD candidates.

• Caitlin Alday sent 75% of her votes to non-BOLD candidates (49% went to slatemate Miguel Espinoza and 26% to the other non-BOLD candidates). Another 8% went into the exhausted pile.
• Edd Montelongo sent 60% of his votes to non-BOLD candidates and another 14% went into the exhausted pile.
• Arasele Torrez Jimenez sent 49% of her votes to non-BOLD candidates and another 27% went into the exhausted pile.
• Ryan Meyerhoff sent 39% of his votes to non-BOLD candidates and another 18% went into the exhausted pile.
• Anna Ruth Crittenden sent 25% of her votes to non-BOLD candidates and another 32% went into the exhausted pile.

Countback Election

Eli Yani graduated in the Spring of 2011 so resigned his Senate seat and a Countback election was held to fill the seat. Ryan Meyerhoff was elected during the Countback Election.

This was the first time the Countback method had been used in ASUCD since it was approved by students in 2005. Prior opportunities to use it were thwarted by too few candidates running in those elections.