Vote in the 2026 AASC Election
Vote for New Members of the
MIT Alumni Association Selection Committee (AASC)
Online voting is now underway for new members of the MIT Alumni Association Selection Committee (AASC). The AASC is the only arm of MIT’s or the Alumni Association’s governance which is open to direct election by the alumni at large. The AASC selects both the upcoming president of the Alumni Association and the directors of the Alumni Association Board of Directors. The MIT AA President later becomes a member of the MIT Corporation, and Board Directors are sometimes candidates for positions on the Corporation as well. The AASC election is the only time when the alumni at large can vote to influence the governance of MIT.
MFSA encourages all of its MIT alumni members to participate in this important election and to make their voices heard.
Nine candidates are on the ballot this year for four open positions. AASC voting closes on February 28, 2026.
Each elected candidate will serve a three year term.
The ballot allows each voter to rank all nine candidates from first choice to ninth choice. The ballots will be counted using a ranked choice scoring algorithm, more information on which is available on the AASC’s FAQ page and in our guidance below.
The Alumni Association places strict limits on candidate information. Candidates are not allowed to make free form statements and only provide responses to specific questions. The Alumni Association also limits the information it provides on candidates to MIT-related activities; professional and personal information is not provided. In addition, the Alumni Association strongly discourages "electioneering, campaigning, or soliciting votes on behalf of any candidate."
MFSA Recommendations
We encourage alumni to conduct their own research on the AASC candidates.Given the paucity of official data provided on candidates by the Alumni Association, the MIT Free Speech Alliance has researched the candidates and provides recommendations for our members.
MFSA recommends that its members vote for the following AASC candidates, and in this order:
Armando Viteri
Michael "Bhumat" Graham
Robert Blumberg
Darcy Prather
Notably, two of the AASC candidates served on the Alumni Association Board of Directors in teh fall of 2021 during the cancellation of Prof. Dorian Abbot’s Carlson Lecture. That Board remained silent over the cancellation. The President of that Board participated in gaslighting the alumni about what had happened, and the Board acquiesced to this misinformation.
MFSA and the AASC
Members of MFSA have previously been elected to the AASC. Wayne Stargardt, the current MFSA president, was elected to and served on the AASC from 2023-2025. Steve Carhart, a member of MFSA’s Executive Committee and Chair of its External Relations Committee, was elected in 2024 and currently serves on the AASC. The Alumni Association (and now the AASC Ballot Selection Committee) no longer accepts nominations of MFSA members by MFSA members.
Guidance on Ranked Choice Voting
For the 2026 AASC election, there are nine candidates for four open positions. The ballot allows each voter to rank all nine candidates from first choice to ninth choice. The ballots will be counted using a ranked choice scoring algorithm, more information on which is available on the AASC’s FAQ page.
Ranked choice ballots are initially scored on the first-place choice on those ballots. If a ballot’s first preferred choice candidate receives the fewest first-place votes of the nine candidates (in this case), then that candidate is eliminated. Instead, the remaining votes are recounted, with that ballot's second choice candidate now being counted as if it had been the first choice. The candidate elimination process and the re-ranking of the ballot's remaining choices continues until the field gets winnowed down to only four candidates remaining receiving votes, both first choice and re-ranked votes. In this way a vote for a lower preference candidate could actually end up boosting that less preferred candidate into victory.
The only truly effective way to vote against less-preferred candidates, then, is to not rank them. This is called bullet voting. It is perfectly acceptable in rank choice voting to leave some or most of the candidates unranked. This way, MIT graduates are assured of having their ballot support only those candidates they strongly support.