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In a ranked choice system, the voter ranks the candidates from
favorite to least favorite. If one candidate has more than half
of the first place votes, the election is over and that
candidate wins. If not, then the candidate with the least votes
is eliminated and that candidate's voters are moved to their
second choice.
“In places that have used ranked choice voting, people tend to
like it,” said Deb Otis, director of research with the
organization FairVote. “They say they prefer it to the prior
method of voting and they want to keep it.”
Only two states in the country, Alaska and Maine, use ranked
choice voting for their elections, but some states have moved to
ban the voting method.
Tazewell County Clerk John Ackerman said the notion that voting
equipment could handle a ranked choice voting election by simply
downloading new software is unlikely.
“Our county clerks that have investigated this are saying that
is not the case and millions of dollars of new equipment is
going to need to be bought in,” said Ackerman.
Edmund Michalowski, deputy clerk of elections in Cook County,
said the move to ranked choice voting would be a major
undertaking.
“When you think of the Chicago Board of Elections and the Cook
County Clerk’s Office, we’re talking about 20,000 election
workers that will have to be trained,” said Michalowski. “That’s
no small step.”
Advocates also say ranked choice voting can replace costly and
complicated runoff voting systems.
Boone County Clerk Meg Sybert said if it isn’t broken, then why
fix it?
“In 2020, we had the systems in place to handle vote by mail,
early vote, all of that, we have been progressive in that,”
Sybert said. “In this instance, I’m not seeing what the problem
is we’re trying to fix with this.”
The task force plans to meet again before reporting its
recommendations to the Illinois General Assembly.
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