Evanston, IL's Ranked Choice Voting Future

This November, the people of Evanston, Illinois will vote on whether to adopt ranked choice voting (RCV) for local elections. If the measure passes, Evanston will be the first Illinois city to use RCV for all voters (Springfield, IL already lets military and overseas voters cast ranked ballots).
On October 3, 2022, Research Analyst Rachel Hutchinson hosted this webinar to discuss the ballot measure and campaign. Our featured panelists included Mayor Daniel Biss, Andrew Szilva of FairVote Illinois, and Brian Bosire of FairVote Minnesota.

[@NikRitchie]

Great discussion! I hope Evanston passes RCV in November!

[@r.p.c.9077]

Nonsense system. Sort of like the New Math that failed the students.

[@iMatti00]

Respectfully, I think you’re crazy. It reminds me of the Chicago mayors race in 2018 where Lori Lightfoot won the race was 17% of the vote because she was running against six or more candidates. So 17 people voted for her, but that’s hypothetically say 83% of the other people who voted for other candidates, let’s say they all said that she was the worst candidate and they hated her. She would still win with the typical voting that we’ve been doing in modern history. It’s called plurality voting. Because that means whoever gets more than the others wins. But rank choice voting (or it’s called instant runoff voting) doesn’t allow somebody to be elected without a majority of 50% plus one vote. I’m just starting this video now though I do know about this voting type system. So I would suggest if you’re honestly confused or believe what you said that you should try to watch some more information. Or I can give you an example that will explain rank choice voting to you if you want.

[@brandoncameron2686]

@@iMatti00 My main problem with ranked choice voting is how long I’ve seen states and cities take to tabulate the final numbers. Even a little state like Maine, takes a while to declare a winner when ranked choice voting kicks in. That might be by design. But it would be great if they could speed up the process so people aren’t waiting anywhere from 24 hours to 3 days to declare a winner in a close race. I’d like to see efficiency with being able to declare a winner in a decent amount of time. They tried to introduce ranked choice voting in Minnesota earlier this year, but the secretary of state says they need more time and 2026 would be too early for them to implement it. I just don’t want to see a statewide ranked choice voting election in a state like Minnesota take three or four days to declare a winner. They need to work on efficiency.