On March 21, freshmen, sophomores and juniors elected next year’s Student Executive Council members in Spangenberg Theater, following candidate introductions and question-and-answer sessions. Election results were posted on Schoology and the SEC website and Instagram page on March 22.
This year’s election marked a shift from approval voting, in which students can select multiple candidates, to ranked-choice voting, in which students can still select multiple choices, but ranked in order of preference. SEC also implemented a new vote-tallying system, changed the location and time of the assembly and altered the candidate speech format.
Six current SEC officers, all seniors, planned and coordinated the elections process: Associated Student Body President Nathan Levy, ASB Vice President Jazmin Rodrigo, School Board Representative Chris Lee (who is also a managing editor for The Oracle), ASB Treasurer Leo Yao, Green Commissioner Angelina Rosh and Wellness Commissioner Daniel van Schewick.
According to Levy, the ranked-choice voting system is more representative because it selects the most universally liked candidate. When tabulating votes for contests with more than two candidates, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and their second-choice votes are redistributed to the remaining candidates based on the ballot rankings until one candidate reaches a majority. As such, the election winner may be most people’s second choice if no candidate has a majority of first-choice votes. Levy noted that this voting method encourages candidates to reach out to more people: They can still benefit from convincing students to place them in a higher position, even if it is not first.
Sophomore Asha Iyer-Schulz, however, pointed out some flaws of the new system.
“In some ways, it’s good that there’s more choice, but it’s a lot easier and takes less time to just choose one candidate,” she said. “I don’t think it mattered much on the results because there weren’t many candidates for each race and it felt like it was just popularity.”
Alongside the new voting system was a new vote-tallying system. In the past, SEC paid for TallySpace, an online vote-tallying service. This year, however, they began using Google Forms and a free online tally counter. According to Student Activities Director Lisa Hall, Schewick and Web/Tech Commissioner senior Dylan Lu also wrote code to eliminate those who voted multiple times or voted for a different class’s officers.
Unlike last year, in which the assembly was held during study hall/SELF in Titan Gym, this year’s election was held twice during a double second period in Spangenberg Theater. Seniors, who were not eligible to vote, had study hall.
During the assembly, rather than giving a speech, each candidate introduced themselves briefly before SEC officers asked them one to three questions specific to the position they were running for. Candidates running unopposed only gave speeches.
According to Levy, all answers were timed strictly so that the assembly would not run over time. Candidates rotated the order that they answered in order to ensure fairness.
Current Freshman Class Vice President and Sophomore Class Vice President-elect Sara Su appreciated this year’s friendly competition.
“It was a lot smaller and there were less materials last year,” she said. “It’s cool to see everyone go all out this year like making posters, giving out handouts or making silly campaign videos.”
According to Hall, around 50% of eligible students participate in schoolwide elections every year. She encourages students to exercise their right to vote, especially for classwide elections, which have lower voter participation rates.
“These people put themselves forward, and it’s important for the student body to get to know the candidates, find out what they really stand for and what they think that they can accomplish in the role — understanding that it’s a job,” she said. “Your vote does count, and sometimes these races do come down to just a few votes. Even though we don’t reveal those exact counts, I can assure you that they do matter.”
