In Spring 2025, Change Party received almost one-third of the votes for the eight senators from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. They got, however, zero seats. With only around 64% of the votes, Vision Party took all nine seats. Vision prevailed in this district, but not by enough to deserve a sweep.
This is the problem with large multimember districts utilizing winner-take-all voting: A narrow majority can capture every seat. Under this system, the candidates with the most votes — even by a slim margin — win all available seats, leaving the minority party, even if it had a rather successful showing, with no representation. This mirrors how the Electoral College works in most states, where the presidential candidate who wins the statewide popular vote receives all of the state’s electoral votes.
What’s different in UF Student Government elections is that this process is used for multiple candidates.
Imagine Florida decided to employ the same process. People would go to the polls and vote for each of the 28 representatives in the House. Every candidate could hypothetically win their race by just a few votes. But whatever political party wins the majority of the races — whether that be 15, 20 or all 28 — that party receives all the seats, no matter the minority party’s outcome.
No American would stand for this undemocratic means of voting. So why does UF? This disparity matters so much more in close races. For example, in the four-seat Engineering district, Change got 42.2% of the votes in Spring 2025, but Vision took all four seats.
Instead of this undemocratic voting method, SG should utilize proportional representation in these multimember districts. Proportional representation is a fairly simple method of voting. If a party wins 60% of the district’s votes, then it would receive 60% of the seats. If there are 10 seats, then it would win six. It’s that simple.
In cases where the numbers don’t come out so easily, the winning party receives the next whole number rounded up. For example, a 60% majority would translate to 4.8 seats in an eight-seat district. So, the winning party would receive five seats. This ensures that minority parties still receive representation even when they do not win the majority of the vote.
So why doesn’t SG utilize this method of voting in these multimember districts? Simply put, the current voting system favors the party with a voting base that consistently shows up to the polls, whether that be due to a passion for civic engagement or social pressure.
That party is the Vision Party, which essentially runs SG with a dominant majority in the UF Student Senate. Proportional representation would ensure that a minority party, once organized and running, could win seats. Why would those in charge implement a system to give a voice to the minority party, thus shooting themselves in the foot?
Another problem is that we cannot fathom voting for a party instead of a candidate. The idea of voting for a party instead of a person, as people do in many other countries, is foreign to many Americans.
The solution is simple.
When you reach the ballot box on election day, you vote for the people. When the votes are tallied up, they are tallied by party.
Using this solution in a district such as CLAS in last Spring’s election, where Vision got around 63% of the votes, they would receive six seats, and those six seats would be given to the Vision candidates with the highest votes. The remaining three seats would be given to Change, who received around 32% of the votes, a number a bit over three seats.
Democracy in the U.S. is a problem. Our president is chosen through a complicated process that rarely reflects the public will. Our districts are drawn by state bureaucrats in a way to suppress the minority party in a given state. And the choice of who to pick is often between two candidates.
At UF, however, we can fix that.
With proportional representation in these “districts” with multiple seats, every vote counts. If the majority party gets almost 100% of the votes, then it takes all the seats, and they deserve it.
If an indie party gets enough of the votes to qualify for a seat, then they get that seat. And if a third-party candidate gets enough votes to qualify for a seat, then they get that seat.
Now, your vote matters. It has the influence to change every seat.
Contact Timothy Dillehay at tdillehay@alligator.org. Follow him on X @timothydilleh.
Timothy Dillehay is a political science and history sophomore and a Spring 2026 Opinions Columnist for The Alligator. He writes on issues related to university administration and student government. In his free time, Timothy enjoys journaling, reading comics and classics, and reviewing films on his Letterboxd.
