When Evanston resident Howard Sachs headed to the polls to cast his early vote on whether the suburb should become the first city in Illinois to adopt ranked choice voting, he said he had his grandkids in mind.
“Our system is so broken … and maybe this isn’t perfect,” Sachs, 73, said of the potential overhaul that would require candidates to receive a majority of votes to win office. “But I believe it is a better way than what we’re doing now.”
Advertisement
Sachs said the increase in political polarization inspired him to get behind Evanston’s binding referendum on whether to implement ranked choice voting, also known as instant runoff voting, for municipal elections.
Like most jurisdictions in the U.S., Evanston elects city officials through plurality voting, meaning candidates who receive the most votes win, regardless of whether their share amounts to a majority of votes cast.
Advertisement
In three-way races, and especially in contests with low turnout, the “winner takes all” system can result in candidates taking office with far from a broad base of support.
In a ranked choice system, voters select the candidate who is their first choice and then have the option to rank additional candidates. If a candidate receives more than 50% of votes as a first choice, they win. If no candidate receives a majority, the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated and each of their votes are redistributed to their supporters’ second choice candidate, and so on, until one candidate secures more than 50% of the votes.
On Election Day, voters in Portland, Seattle and Nevada also will be choosing whether to adopt ranked choice voting. Ranked choice voting is already employed in statewide elections in Alaska and Maine, and in more than 50 cities, according to the electoral reform organization FairVote.
Some researchers say ranked choice voting can reduce political polarization, and proponents also claim it can increase diversity and reengage alienated voters. New York City’s first ranked choice election in 2021 saw historic turnout and resulted in doubling the number of women on City Council.
In Evanston, supporters include Mayor Daniel Biss, who hopes that if his city adopts ranked choice the state could eventually follow suit.
The Evanston City Council voted 7-0, with two abstentions, to put the referendum on the ballot, but the proposal does have critics.
“Ranked choice voting is a solution to a problem that does not exist, sows electoral confusion amongst voters, and makes a straightforward process unnecessarily complicated,” wrote John Foley, a member of the Evanston Township Republican organization, which is recommending a no vote on the referendum, in an emailed statement.
The Democratic Party of Evanston and Libertarian Party of Illinois have endorsed the referendum, along with state Rep. Robyn Gabel, state Sen. Mike Simmons, Cook County Commissioner Larry Suffredin, Evanston City Clerk Stephanie Mendoza and a handful of groups, including the League of Women Voters. The Green Party got a nonbinding, ranked choice voting measure on the June primary ballot in Berwyn, where a vast majority of voters said they thought the state should allow it.
Advertisement
“There’s people on the right and the left that get very emotional about ‘Is ranked choice voting going to do harm or good?’ But it’s actually at its base, just a different way of counting so that you ensure that the candidate who wins has 50% plus one of the votes,” said Caroline Tolbert, a political science professor at the University of Iowa who edited an academic journal on “The Politics, Promise and Peril of Ranked Choice Voting.”
Tolbert said nonpartisanship is baked into the nature of ranked choice voting. Some Republicans felt differently after Democrat Mary Peltola of Alaska beat Republican Sarah Palin and conservative Nick Begich III in a ranked choice special election in August, becoming the first Alaska Native to serve in the U.S. House.
Evanston’s municipal elections are nonpartisan and primaries only occur when the number of candidates meets a certain threshold, depending on the office. Along with implementing ranked choice voting, the referendum also would eliminate Evanston’s municipal primaries.
Evanston resident and FairVote Illinois volunteer Larry Garfield has been promoting the referendum throughout the city. Among his arguments: The system engenders less vitriol in political campaigns.
The winning strategy in a plurality system often entails attacking opponents, Garfield said at a presentation for senior voters. But in ranked choice elections, “constantly belittling your opponents backfires” because it’s in every candidates’ interest to court not only first choice but also second and third choice votes, he said.
The process of ranking can inherently improve voters’ attitudes on the outcomes of elections, according to Manuel Gutiérrez, a visiting scholar of the Institute for Legal, Legislative and Policy Studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield, who’s been analyzing ranked choice voting since 2020. Gutiérrez found voters would be more likely to support the winning candidate under a ranked choice system.
Advertisement
“People are a little bit more satisfied with the results because they were allowed to express their opinion in the ballot,” he said. “The person that wins could be their second, third, fourth option. They still feel included. They still feel part of the process. That electoral ‘loser’ effect, it diminishes, becomes a little less prominent — just because they were able to rank them.”
Gutiérrez also found that third party candidates receive a higher percentage of votes in ranked choice voting systems.
“In most elections, people engage in strategic voting. … ‘Why am I going to waste my vote on the Green Party or Libertarian Party, if I know realistically they’re not going to win. … I might as well vote for this other candidate, for the lesser of the two evils,’ ” Gutiérrez said of what’s known as the spoiler effect.
In ranked choice voting, Gutiérrez said, “Voters are not forced to make a strategic decision right away. They can vote their conscience and then begin to shift strategy second.”
Biss, the Evanston mayor, said the potential shift in the city’s electoral system could bring alienated voters back to the polling place. “Ranked choice voting is a tool that enables someone who would otherwise feel that way to be an equal participant in the process,” Biss said at a virtual Democratic Party of Evanston meeting on the referendum.
Voter turnout for Evanston’s most recent municipal primary in February 2021 was low, with just more than 20% of registered voters casting a ballot, according to Cook County Clerk data.
Advertisement
Evanston 8th Ward Ald. Devon Reid won his primary with less than a majority vote before winning the general election with 51% of the vote . He abstained from voting on the City Council resolution which put ranked choice on Tuesday’s ballot. Reid said the primary elections are necessary and that he fears a ranked choice system will favor centrist candidates and split the minority vote.
“Our (society) requires folks who are pushing the boundaries of what we have thought is traditional and normal, so we can push our society and our country and in this case, our city, forward,” Reid said.
But New York City Council Member Crystal Hudson told Evanston voters attending the Democratic Party of Evanston’s forum she credits ranked choice voting with ushering in the most diverse council that the city’s seen.
“Ranked choice voting really provides an opportunity for “non traditional” candidates, like myself, as a Black gay woman to be elected,” Hudson said.
“We had the first Muslim woman elected in New York City; the first Indian man … the first two Korean women elected. We had so many firsts. It’s hard to even keep track,” said Hudson. “Rank choice voting gave all of us a shot and a greater chance at ending up in that number one spot on the ballot.”
Reid noted that the comparison to Evanston isn’t apples to apples. “New York implemented rank choice voting in a partisan primary — very different from implementing rank choice voting in a nonpartisan primary and eliminating our primary in Evanston,” he said.
Advertisement
Evanston 9th Ward Ald. Juan Geracaris, a Biss appointee who put forward the resolution that placed ranked choice voting on the ballot, said he doesn’t think Evanston politics will shift to the center if voters choose to adopt ranked choice.
He hopes, rather, more people will feel free to vote their conscience and candidates will encourage them to do so. “I would never want to be a candidate that people would be holding their nose to vote for,” he said.
Republican-led legislatures in Florida and Tennessee passed laws in 2022 banning the implementation of ranked choice voting.
But Illinois election law authorizes Evanston to adopt the system if voters so chose, according to a State Board of Elections spokesperson. And Dominion Voting Systems, which currently provides Cook County’s voting equipment, offers ranked choice voting technology currently used in other jurisdictions, according to a company spokesperson.
The claim of voter confusion is the most common critique of ranked choice, according to Garfield, the FairVote Illinois volunteer.
Voter education campaigns can readily minimize confusion, said Tolbert and Gutierrez.
Advertisement
“It’s not complicated and part of what our work has shown is that when this has been implemented, that basically all demographic groups find rank choice voting easy,” said Tolbert.
Biss and other proponents think Evanston can serve as proof of what ranked choice has to offer Illinois more broadly.
“This type of reform is the way of the future,” said Biss. “I think it’s going to be a while before we get there on a statewide basis in Illinois. And I think having communities like Evanston implement it and having it go well, is a critical step along the way.”
Chicago Tribune’s John Keilman contributed.