It seems like we as an organization have problems every year around this time. From my point of view, these problems seem to come from trying to form a single viable coalition well before the election. I understand that the motivation behind this is to create a set of SWILPresidents that will (a) “be best for SWIL” and (b) minimize offending other non-members.
Most of the badness seems to center around the cloak of secrecy that generally surrounds the formation of said coalitions. The idea seems to be to have the coalition fully formed well in advance of making the general SWIL populace aware of who is in the coalition. The problem is that, in order to form the coalition, you need to talk to people, which means that word is going to get out. This is particularly an issue if more than the standard three people want to be president.
I think we should consider a more democratic method of electing the SWILPresidents. SWIL as a whole should know what’s best for itself, and be able to pick three individuals who will best serve as co-presidents. There are a number of different methods that could be used, including approval voting (take the top three vote-getters), or everyone gets three votes, or something else entirely. I think that making the election more than just a big inside joke would help more than it would hurt. It would eliminate the secrecy that tends to cause methods.
The only major problem that I can forsee is that we could end up electing three individuals who can’t/won’t work together. I would hope that this is the sort of thing that we as college students can resolve.
What is the history of SWIL election methods? I know we haven’t always had trifectas, but has every trifecta been a pre-made coalition? Can we avoid this sort of thing in the future?
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