Computer Will Tally Votes For New Faculty Council

The complicated proportional representation (PR) voting system that has been adopted for electing the Faculty Council will take a computer to unravel the results.

The system, a variation of the "Hare" system used in elections for the Cambridge City Council, virtually eliminates the advantage of bullet ballots and organized group voting.

Six Each

Under the system, which was adapted for Harvard use by Kenneth S. Arrow, professor of Economics, the Faculty will select four tenured and two non-tenured members to represent each of the three academic fields-the Social Sciences, the Humanities, and the Natural Sciences.

A group of Nat Sci 110 students under the supervision of William H. Bossert, Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Mathematics, are working on the program a computer will use to tally the voting returns.

Bossert said that the system was "so damned complicated" that it would be nearly impossible to use without the assistance of a computer. His students are currently testing one program for the election with mock ballots.

Election System

Each Faculty member will vote for as many of the candidates as he chooses in decreasing order of preference. For each category a quota will be computed and those candidates with as many votes as the quota will be elected. The candidate with the least votes is eliminated.

On the next round the ballots for eliminated candidates are redistributed at full value to second choice candidates. The ballots for elected candidates are redistributed at fractional value.

The adoption of the PR voting system by the Faculty on November 18 was considered a victory for the liberal caucus. At that meeting the Faculty rejected the recommendation of the Fainsod Committee that the dean of the Faculty appoint the council's 18 members with elections being held only if the Faculty did not approve of the dean's choices.

The council members will serve as a "combined Dean's cabinet and steering committee for the Faculty" as well as sitting on three of the four new committees.

Nomination forms are being sent out this week and voting will run through the last two weeks in January.