GREENFIELD — As Massachusetts voters considered — and defeated — ranked-choice voting at the polls Tuesday, so did Greenfield Community College’s Student Senate, which discussed a similar amendment to its constitution, but decided to wait on voting until its student trustee could review the proposal.
Student Sen. Satya Johnson proposed the change and presented the reasons why in late October. A vote was expected Monday, but the Senate chose to postpone. A new voting date has not yet been announced.
“With ranked-choice voting on the ballot in Massachusetts this year, I thought it would be a good time to change our college’s voting system to a more democratic and representative process,” said Johnson, who began his first term as a student senator this fall. “I drafted the proposed amendment to the Student Senate Constitution.”
GCC’s Student Senate consists of eight seats, as well as a president, vice president and student trustee. Students would be able to rank all or some of the candidates for a seat on the Senate, or they could tie some.
Johnson said students who run for competitive seats — president, vice president and student trustee — would compete in separate races, but those who run for the other eight seats would compete together in the same race using ranked-choice voting.
Every student who votes would be allowed to indicate his or her first preference, second, third and so on for every candidate. Write-in candidates would also be allowed and would be ranked.
Johnson said there would be a tally table listing every possible combination of two candidates. For each combination, the tally table would indicate the number of specified voters who prefer the first of the two over the second, who have no preference, and the number who prefer the second candidate over the first.
“A specific formula would be used,” he said. “After the first is chosen, he or she would be taken out of the mix and the remaining voter preferences would be considered.”
Johnson said at least four seats are up for election every semester and student senators serve for a year.
“Sometimes, there’s more than four because someone leaves or transfers or graduates,” Johnson said. “I think this is the best possible system, the most fair. The person with the most votes would take the first seat and so on.”
Johnson said he feels the new system would be more representative of the student body. He said elections at GCC aren’t particularly competitive, very rarely having more students than there are seats.
“This might decrease the struggle to find enough candidates, who currently have to get signatures to run,” Johnson said. “It would eliminate that need.”
A ranked-choice voting system, he hopes, will open the door for more students to run. The Student Senate meets weekly, currently online.
“It’s not likely to make a big difference in the actual outcome of an election, but it has the potential,” he said. “It’s all about caring about democracy and fair representation.”
If passed, the new voting system would take effect next semester, in late January or early February.
For more information about GCC’s Student Senate, visit bit.ly/34NjqAT.
Reach Anita Fritz at 413-772-9591 or afritz@recorder.com.