Oh, readers. The things we do for you. I am still hungover from last night’s epic hackfest bzzr garden, and I am trying to understand math. I haven’t voted yet, and was confused on how, exactly, voting worked. Over here at Confidential, we used our cute little smiles to coerce our special analyst into helping our cute little brains.

Confused on voting? Keep reading after the jump for how it works.

Want the News for Noobs version? Here is how to vote.

1. Research ahead of time (these are the candidates, this is who we want to win, and this is the referendum breakdown)
2. You are allowed 15 minutes to vote. However, you can save your progress and come back later, with 15 minutes allotted each time you sign back in.
3. Go here anytime between NOW and January 29
4. Tell your friends to vote! DO IT! <3

How Voting Works, in English

This is how voting works in MathSpeak. If this stuff turns you on, you may like this.

AMS Executive positions: The Condorcet method is a fancy way of saying that you get to rank the candidates in order for how much you love them, with the winner being the general winner, i.e. the person most people want to sleep with (politics is sexy, people). The idea behind this is to avoid vote splitting. The Condorcet Smart Way of Voting pairs up each candidate head to head and whoever is most preferred over the other wins.

Let’s rank a pretend ballot (1. Unicorns 2. Rainbows 3. Puppies). Unicorns, Rainbows, and Puppies then go head to head in pairs, in which the winner is fuschia. (Unicorns vs Rainbows), (Unicorns vs Puppies), (Rainbows vs Puppies).  It is then obvious that the Unicorns prevail. Obviously, people rank in different orders and it gets a little more complicated, but just rank honestly. Strategic voting with the Condorcet Smart Way of Voting gets messy and is risky business (wrap it up, kids).

Senate, Board of Governors, Ubyssey, and SLFS: These are simple First Past the Post ballots. You get to pick 5 awesome people for Senate, 2 awesome people for BoG, 5 awesome people for Ubyssey, and 6 awesome peple for SLFS (in which there is a slate). Whoever gets the most votes wins!

Voter Funded Media: For the One Time VFM (which is the one seen on your sexy online ballot) they use One Time Interpolated Consensus. (For the crazy owmyheadhurts deal, go here. There’s even a spreadsheet you can download!!1!) It’s so complicated that we finally understand it, but don’t want to confuse you. So, here’s another flowchart to make your decision really easy.

Also, don’t forget to vote for us in Continuous VFM! This means you get to vote every single day. We’d love your 40% here.