Now that the elections are over and the dust has settled, members of the ASUO senate have created a working group to change the way the ASUO conducts elections.

The ASUO presidential election was decided by both a primary and general election. As described in the ASUO elections rules if no candidate receives over 50 percent of the vote in the primary election a general election takes place between the two candidates who received the most votes.

Oregon State, on the other hand, used an instant runoff election for the first time. The ASOSU previously had primary and general elections like the ASUO. In an instant runoff election voters rank the candidate on their ballot eliminating the second round of voting, explained Associated Students of Oregon State University President Elect Taylor Sarman.

“What you do is rank and slate your candidates that you wanted for president and vice president,” Sarman said. “Voters had the opportunity to rank one, two, three, four, five and then after the first round of voting the lowest number drops off and those votes are reallocated to the second choice.”

ASUO Senator Elect Andrew Lubash introduced the idea of an instant runoff election to senate this term.

“I would really like to see an instant runoff of the same nature that the Oregon State University has,” Lubash said. “I think that process would allow for more candidates to run in the first place.”

Universities across the United States use instant runoff elections including Harvard, MIT, Stanford and more.

There are many advantages to ASOSU’s switch to the instant runoff voting system. According to Sarman the instant runoff election helped to increase voter turnout.

“This past year we had 15 percent of the student body turn out to vote,” Sarman said. “Last year something like 9.4 percent voted in the primary and then 4.5 percent turned out to vote in the general election.”

At University of Oregon voter turnout significantly decreased from the primary to the general election — 1,174 fewer students voted in the general than in the primary elections.

“I think it’s taxing to have two weeks of elections when we have classes to go to, the student body experiences fatigue,” Lubash said. “I think that was clearly evidenced in the results of the second week’s elections. A thousand less people voted. Students don’t want to deal with us for two weeks, so I think that’s a really good solution.”

The biggest challenge associated with the new election system that Sarman faces is changing the culture of voting at OSU.

“A fairly significant amount of the student population voted that only ranked 1 or 2 candidates,” Sarman said. “Which is fine, it just means that if your first choice candidate didn’t get enough votes then your vote was essentially done after that ticket was dropped.”

Any decision on elections reform at UO is a ways off. Changes to the election rules are a long term issue that students will continue to discuss until the next election.The elections reform working group met Tuesday May 13 and started a discussion of problems with the current elections system and potential solutions.