Referendum Could Make Evanston First IL Town With Ranked Choice Voting

EVANSTON, IL — Evanston will become the first town in Illinois to adopt a ranked choice voting system if voters approve a referendum question on the ballot this midterms.

Ranked choice voting, also known as instant runoff voting, allows voters to rank candidates in their order of preference, eliminating primary elections.

If no single candidate gets a majority of first-choice votes in the first round, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated from contention.

But voters whose candidate was eliminated still get their votes counted — they are simply transferred to their next choice. This process is repeated until a candidate has the majority of votes.

More than 50 cities across the country use ranked choice voting, or RCV, as of July 2022, including New York City, San Francisco and more than 20 cities in Utah, according to the pro-RCV group Fairvote.

Alaska and Maine have implemented ranked choice voting for statewide elections. Currently in Illinois, ranked choice voting is only in use for military and overseas voters in Springfield local elections.

Advocates of implementing ranked choice voting argue that it disincentivizes negative campaigning, eliminates "strategic" voting and "spoiler" candidates, saves money by not having runoffs and ensures anyone that wins will have support from at least half of voters.

The Evanston referendum has the support of the Democratic Party of Evanston, Libertarian Party of Illinois, Reform for Illinois, League of Women Voters of Evanston, Indivisible Evanston, Common Cause Illinois and E-Town Sunrise

It has also been endorsed by four members of the City Council and Mayor Daniel Biss, who proposed legislation to implement RCV statewide when he was a state senator. The bill failed to attract co-sponsors and was never brought to the floor for a vote.

City Clerk Stephanie Mendoza, who was forced into a runoff election by write-in candidates despite being the only candidate who submitted nominating petitions to be on the ballot, Democratic Cook County Commissioner Larry Suffredin, State Rep. Robyn Gabel and State Sen. Mike Simmons also endorse the referendum, according to a website of the Yes for Ranked Choice Voting in Evanston Committee.

In a ranked choice voting forum hosted last month by the League of Women Voters of Evanston, Biss used the example of the 2000 presidential election. The mayor noted that if RCV had been used in Florida, the nearly 100,000 votes that went to Green Party candidate Ralph Nader would have been distributed to the other candidates, potentially changing the result of the election, which former President George W. Bush won by fewer than 1,000 votes.

“In a closely divided election where nobody has a majority, you might then want to ask, ‘Hey, what were people’s second and third choices?’” Biss said, the Evanston Round Table reported. “And that’s what ranked choice voting does.”

One councilmember has vocally opposed the referendum. Ald. Devon Reid, 8th Ward, said he worried the change would "disproportionally impact the Black and Brown community" and "dissuade more folks from coming out or dilute what their say is," according to WTTW. He suggested it could be disenfranchising for voters to have to evaluate and order multiple candidates.

Lawmakers in two states — Florida and Tennessee — have passed legislation banning ranked choice or instant runoff voting. Judges have upheld RCV policies against challenges in state and federal courts, according to a Congressional Research Service report.

If approved, Evanston will begin using ranked choice voting during the April 2025 local elections.

Residents of Evanston's neighbor to the west are also considering binding referendum questions that would reform the village of Skokie's electoral process.

Skokie voters have been presented with a trio of questions, placed on the ballot as the result of a citizen-initiated signature drive, asked whether they would like to shift to non-partisan, staggered elections with a hybrid of at-large and district-level trustees.

Those efforts have been opposed by the Skokie Caucus Party, which has dominated local elections since the mid-1960s, and five-term incumbent Mayor George Van Dusen, who first became a village trustee in 1984.