On Wednesday, May 14, 2026, the results of the 2026 Student Council (StuCo) Executive Elections were publicly announced, marking the end of a short but historical and innovative election season. Noticeably, this is the first election where the new STAR (Score-Then-Automatic-Runoff) voting system is used, all voters were deemed eligible to run for all Executive elections, and candidate Q&As during lunchtime were introduced. The electoral winners include Sosuke (’27) and Victor (’27) as President and Vice President, Aahan (’27) as Secretary, Michi (’27) as Treasurer, and Ireneus (’27) as Event Coordinator. Overall, the results were unsurprising to many and herald a new, more innovative era for StuCo, although the conduct and organization of the election could be improved on.
OFFICIAL TALLY:
President and Vice President
Sosuke (’27) and Victor (’27) – 652 stars, won the majority of votes in Grades 8, 10, and 11
Aoto (’27) and Noah (’27) – 547 stars
Terry L (’29) and Terry F (’29) – 348 stars, won the majority of votes in Grade 9
Secretary
Aahan (’27) – 634 stars, won the majority of votes in Grade 9 and 11
Yunseong (’27) – 489 stars, won the majority of votes in Grade 10
Matti (’29) – 282 stars,
Itsuki (’30) – 278 stars, won the majority of votes in Grade 8
Treasurer
Michi (’27) – 414 stars, RE-ELECTED, won the majority of votes in Grade 10 and 11
Kai T (’27) – 333 stars, won the majority of votes in Grade 10
Ren (’27) – 324 stars
Lucas Y (’29) – 295 stars, won majority of votes in Grade 8 and 9
Aiden (’28) – 211 stars
Michael/Seokhyun (’28) – 190 stars
Event Coordinator
Ireneus (’27) – 613 stars, won the majority of votes in Grade 9 and 11
Jiei (’29) – 570 stars, won the majority of votes in Grade 8 and 10
Taiga (’27) – 362 stars
Liming (’30) – 212 stars
Jun Hwi (’30) – 191 stars
New Modifications
Several important changes were made for this election, which were all related to the passing of the StuCo v2.0 Initiative, reforming many previous electoral practices. These include:
- REMOVAL OF THE FIRST-PAST-THE-POST SYSTEM: Under the Fair Choice Act, the first-past-the-post system, in which voters are only allowed to choose one candidate, was phased out. This is because it does not allow voters to express a complete opinion on all the candidates, encourages polarization, and could potentially lead to a winner being elected by a minority of people.
- IMPLEMENTATION OF THE STAR VOTING SYSTEM: Under the Fair Choice Act, in all future StuCo elections until an amendment is made, the STAR voting system is to be used. Basically, this is where voters give scores from 0 (worst) to 5 (best) stars to all the candidates in the first scoring round, and the two highest-scoring candidates advance to the second automatic runoff round. In the second round, each voter’s full vote is given to the finalist they preferred out of the two.
- IMPLEMENTATION OF LUNCHTIME Q&A’S: This election season saw the implementation of the first lunchtime Q&A’s, where candidates were interviewed in front of the entire high school student body by StuCo. This allows them to state their campaign views in front of the electorate.
- USE OF NEW VOTING SOFTWARE: In order to allow voters to have a more intuitive experience when voting, bettervoting.com was used instead of Google Forms. Specialized in STAR voting, it also allows for more accurate counting of votes.
Issues
- SOFTWARE PROBLEMS: Unfortunately, bettervoting.com only allows for 100 voters per election without further communication. Therefore, an individual election has to be created for each grade, and the candidates’ votes are calculated based on total scores, which only include the first round. This issue would be addressed in the upcoming Class Representative elections, as each grade has fewer than 100 people.
- MISUNDERSTANDING ON SCORING: While it is mostly clear that 0 stars means the worst and 5 stars means the best, many voters still do not understand the difference or have different interpretations of scores from 1-4. This will be addressed with more understandable and educational instruction on voting.
