ELECTION UPDATE: Run-off today after ranked-choice ‘tie’ for senior class Agenda rep

Source: Fairness Committee; BP Graphic by Ezra Helfand

POINTS: One candidate for the second 12th grade Agenda representative seat received more second-place votes, while the other received more third. Their point totals were identical.

By Sonya Katzin, Ninth Grade
September 19, 2022

UPDATE: Senior Jack Metzger has won the tie-breaker runoff for 12th-grade Agenda representative yesterday, defeating Zoe Ritz by an undisclosed margin. The result was announced by Fairness Co-Char Elliot Serure to the senior class at 6:50 pm on the 12th-grade Schoology group.

Wednesday’s Just Community elections for 12th grade Agenda Committee representatives resulted in a complicated result: a tie for second place. This is the first tie in Just Community representative voting history in recent memory, and the first ever under ranked-choice voting.

Four students ran for two senior Agenda Representative positions. The first place winner, Eli Weiss, won one position, and the second representative was announced as a tie. The two who tied, Fairness co-chairs said, had received an equal number of “points.”

Points were allotted by multiplying the number of votes candidates received for first, second, third and fourth choice. The higher the place the higher the number, so a candidate with 10 first-place votes would receive more points for them than a candidate with 10 second-place votes.

The two candidates who tied, Jack Metzger and Zoe Ritz, received the same number of total points. However, one received more second-place votes, while the other received more third-place votes.

Fairness leaders did not say which candidate received more of which type of votes.

Eliana Kerendian and Elliot Serure, Fairness Co-Chairs, and Dr. Keith Harris, who is the Fairness Committee faculty advisor, announced Friday that the tie-breaker vote would be held today.

The poll was posted to Schoology during Flex this morning and is expected to be counted during lunch.

The election used a ranked-choice voting system established during Town Hall in 2019. In a ranked voting election, voters rank candidates from favorite to least favorite.

“If you were, for example, to have three people running, you would have three choices, first choice, second choice and third choice… you would multiply the [amount of] first choice votes by three, because those are the ones that have the most weight, and the third-place votes by one, and the middle one by two,” said Elliot Serure.

“Depending on the amount of people you have running, you can be multiplying the first place votes by five, by six… then when you add all the numbers up together, whoever has the largest number wins.”

Votes were counted during lunch on Thursday in the presence of Boiling Point representatives, and results were posted soon afterwards on Schoology by Fairness Co-Chair, Eliana Kerendian.

Here is the final list of winners:

FAIRNESS COMMITTEE:

9th Grade:

Lev Fishman and Ariel Mazar defeated Ella Nadel

10th Grade:

Tamar Rose and Samuel Kerendian defeated Eitan Alon

11th grade:

Kyla Zachary and Sami Brous-Light ran unopposed

12th Grade:

Jonathan Soroudi and Olivia Fishman defeated Alexandra Guetta

AGENDA COMMITTEE:

9th Grade: