Campaign season is upon us, so prepare to be bombarded with quarter sheets and handshakes from kids who know your facebut can’t quite recall your name. Enjoy the jubilee while it lasts, though. A season of post-election grief always follows the disappointing, yet predictable, results. In fact, the tradition of Greek students winning elected office is almost as strong as the tradition of non-Greek students bemoaning the results of the SGA election.
Apathetic voters, corrupt fraternity guys and the menacing administration typically bear the blame for spoiling the democratic process. Are they the true culprits, though? We’ve made voting easier than ever and leveled the playing field to a heap of regulatory minutia, yet the Greek voting bloc continues to carry the election year after year.
In light of our feeble victory-by-plurality election, we shouldn’t be surprised. The SGA election doesn’t require an executive candidate to win most of the votes, just more than the other guys. With such a low bar for victory, the election becomes a contest to turn out the vote, and social clubs happen to perform exceptionally well at that game.
If we want the SGA election results to reflect the broader interests of campus, we have to design an electoral process that effectively incorporates the diversity of our student body.
We don’t have to reinvent the wheel, though. The framers of the U.S. Constitution understood how large voting blocs had historically dominated popular-vote democracies. To avoid this snare, they crafted the Electoral College system, which effectively balances the diverse interests of the minority against the collective will of the masses.
An electoral college system could work here, too. Without picking apart the structural technicalities, it’s easy to see how an electoral college system would dilute the influence of the Greek voting bloc and incorporate the diversity of the entire student body in the SGA elections.
In essence, the 13 colleges could operate like a system of levees, allowing students to cast their votes in local, autonomous pools. If a flood of voters dominates one college, the electoral votes of the remaining 12 colleges would remain insulated from their influence. An electoral college system would drive candidates to adopt new strategies that appeal to colleges, not cliques.
As in national races, we could see “battleground colleges” develop as independent candidates, both Greek and non-Greek, gain influence among their academic peers, whose votes carry more weight in smaller pools. In this way, an electoral college system would open new channels for students to express their interests in the SGA election.
Any prudent election reform should aim to make the election process meaningful and worthwhile. By driving election politics down to a more local level, an electoral college system would do just that.
Cruise Hall is a junior majoring in mechanical engineering. His column runs biweekly.
