Macalester College Student Government's Legislative Body will vote on the use of instant runoff voting (IRV) in student government elections at its meeting next Tuesday.

The implementation of IRV voting is supported by both the Mac Dems and Mac Greens. According to Legislative Body member Andy Haug '06, IRV voting simulates the effects of a runoff election instantaneously.

Instead of voting for a single candidate in an election, voters will instead rank all candidates running for office in order of preference.

After voting has been completed, tabulation of the ballots is a little more complicated than the system currently in use. First, all candidates are grouped by first rank choice. If any candidate has a clear majority they have won the election.

If no candidate has majority, then the candidate with the least number of first place votes is dropped out of the elections. The votes for that candidate are then transferred to the second choice candidate of those voters.

If there is still no clear majority, the system continues dropping out the candidate with the lowest number of votes, redistributing these votes according to the ranking of the voter.

Because IRV works best for single-position races, it will only be used for the Executive Committee of Legislative board.

Several salient features of IRV led MacDems and MacGreens to posit its use. First, as Haug points out, IRV is effective in races with more than two candidates which splits the vote countless ways.

"Instant runoff voting is a good idea for Macalester because we so often see a wide range of candidates in Executive Committee races. While these candidates understandably split the vote into a number of small pieces, IRV will promote better representation," Haug said.

A representative from the Mac Greens described IRV as a way to make sure that the candidate who is in office appeals to the greatest number of people, avoiding the effect of the "spoiler" candidate.

Both the MacDems and MacGreens point out that many colleges, and even governmental bodies such as the city of San Francisco, Cal., have adopted instant runoff voting.

The Legislative Body will vote on whether to present this referendum to the student body. Should it pass in the Legislative Body with a two thirds majority, the referendum will be placed on the student wide ballot on April 16th.

The referendum would need a simple majority to pass.