The League of Women Voters of Roselle/Bloomingdale hosted our Fall Kickoff event at Pollyanna Brewing Company in Roselle on Monday, September 20, 2021.

The evening included a presentation entitled, “Ranked Choice Voting – What it is and why it works.” Our speaker, Andrew Szilva, President of FairVote Illinois, shared his thoughts about why voters like Ranked Choice Voting in the cities and states that have tried it. Andrew's brief presentation was followed by an informal question and answer session with our League members and guests. 

As part of the event, we conducted a “mock election” using a flight of four Pollyanna craft beers. Attendees tasted their beers and the League used FairVote’s rankit.vote to tabulate the voting rounds and publish results of the ranked choice beers.

Ranked choice voting is gaining support across the country.  Maine and Alaska are the first states to adopt it.  San Francisco, Minneapolis, and most recently New York City now run elections using ranked choice voting. The first test of Ranked Choice Voting in New York City resulted in a more than 29% increase in citywide turnout over the previous mayoral election.  Exit polls found that most voters surveyed indicated they ranked at least three candidates in the mayoral primary, and 95% of voters surveyed found the ballot simple to complete — findings that held true across ethnic groups.

New York City is the 22nd jurisdiction to be using ranked choice voting today, with that number to soar to nearly 50 this November.  There’s been some early talk of adopting Ranked Choice Voting for municipal elections in Chicago and FairVote is currently engaged in a campaign to bring ranked Choice Voting to Evanston.  Ranked Choice Voting bills have been introduced in both the Illinois House and Senate that would extend RCV to General Assembly and statewide races.

Ranked Choice Voting has the following benefits:

• Guarantees the winning candidate has majority support

• Puts the focus on policy discussions and signals voter policy preferences with voter data on preferred policies

• Requires a shift in campaign strategy to prioritize voters and build broad coalitions of support, lessening the influence of special interests

• Reduces negative campaigning since candidates need to appeal to the voters of competing candidates

• Eliminates the “spoiler” effect so 

• voters can feel free to vote based on their true intentions instead of on a calculation of who has the best likelihood of winning

• third party and independent candidates choose to run increasing voter choices and political competition

• Boosts voter turnout and engagement

Ranked Choice Voting has many benefits but requires more voter education, more work for election clerks and volunteers, longer wait time for election results, new ballot counting equipment or software. Once purchased, DuPage County’s new voting equipment will be able to support Ranked Choice Voting.

For more information about the League’s events and monthly meetings, please contact Roberta Borrino at (630) 283-2894. This League event was free and open to the public.