Several Illinois municipalities are trying to implement ranked choice voting, but confusion about Illinois election law has slowed the implementation process. Several lawmakers are trying to change that.
Ranked choice voting allows people to rank candidates in the order they most want them. If no candidate gets 50% then the lowest candidate is dropped and their supporters' votes go to their second choice. This is repeated until one candidate gets over 50% of the vote.
Supporters of ranked choice voting said it will give third-party candidates a chance to win and force candidates to appeal to a wider group of voters. Opponents said ranked choice voting would be too confusing for voters and cost too much to implement.
Past efforts to pass ranked choice voting on the state level have failed but some municipalities are trying to pass it.
Voters in Evanston, a suburb north of Chicago, passed a referendum in 2022 to implement ranked choice voting, but the Cook County Clerk—which oversees elections in Evanston—said current election laws only allow a person to vote for one candidate.
Two other Cook County communities that have adopted ranked choice voting, Oak Park and Skokie, may also be left waiting.
The nonpartisan good government group Reform for Illinois and the City of Evanston sued but are still waiting for the case to be heard.
Peoria also passed a nonbinding referendum in 2024 to research ranked choice voting but currently has no plans to implement it.
Dan Ashurst is executive director of Fair Vote Illinois, a group that supports ranked choice voting. He said they are looking to make the state election code more clear and give guidelines on how to implement ranked choice voting at the local level.
“They need the state board of elections to come in and give them standards on how to administer a ranked choice voting election and make sure that there is state level leadership of how to technically implement it,” Ashurst said.
Ashurst supports a bill a trio of state lawmakers have introduced that would make it clear that local governments can implement ranked choice voting if they choose. In the meantime, ranked choice voting's legality is being challenged in court.
Ashurst said by implementing ranked choice voting, people will simply vote for who they think is best, instead of a strategic vote when someone votes for the candidate they believe has the best chance of winning.
“I like to remind people that voting and democracy is core to our political system,” Ashurst said. “It affects all other issues that we think about, whether it's whatever you care about, if it's immigration, it's health care, it's housing, it's affordability.”
Regional efforts to implement ranked choice voting have failed and the bill has not been called for a vote.
Lawmakers weigh in
Republican state Sen. Chris Balkema, representing a large rural area between Bloomington-Normal and Interstate 80, ran a survey asking his constituents how they felt about ranked choice voting with 83% of respondents opposing it.
Balkema said the voting system in Illinois already works and he believes a new system would cause confusion.
“We have a wonderful election system that's been functioning well for multiple centuries, and to inject this caveat into it, is not seen as needed by the majority of my district,” Balkema said.
Balkema said he thinks ranked choice voting would be more confusing.
“It's a pretty super simple process that I think we ought to stick with,” Balkema said.
Democratic state Sen. Dave Koehler, representing parts of Peoria and Bloomington-Normal, said he would support any bill implementing ranked choice voting, but he is not pushing for it this spring session.
Koehler said he supports ranked choice voting because it makes candidates appeal to a broader range of voters.
“From what I have seen, it tends to lessen the nasty rhetoric that you sometimes see in elections because people are now not only asking for your vote, they're asking for your second place vote,” he said.
Koehler said ranked choice voting has been successfully implemented in states like Maine and is starting to become a trend in cities.
Republican state Sen. Sally Turner, who previously ran elections in Logan County as its county clerk, said she opposes ranked choice voting for financial reasons.
“Local counties don't have the money to implement ranked choice voting, nor does the state have any money to give to local governments to help them figure out how to do ranked choice voting,” Turner said.
Turner said ranked choice voting could work on a local level but that should be up to local governments to decide.
Ranked choice voting in Peoria
In Peoria, the League of Women Voters facilitated discussions about the ranked choice voting referendum and encouraged voters to support it.
Chris Kaergard, president of the League of Women Voters [LWV] in Greater Peoria, said the organization facilitated discussions about the ranked choice voting referendum in Peoria.
"It's something nationally that the League of Women Voters favors, that is allowing local jurisdictions to explore alternative methods of having elections,” said Kaergard.
Kaergard said the league supported ranked choice voting because it meets its goals of maximizing effectiveness, minimizing wasted votes and increasing voter turnout.
“It encourages more people to get into races, allowing a wider spectrum of choice for voters between candidates who may stand differently on different issues, and if you have ranked choice voting, you may become a viable candidate when you wouldn't have been one before,” Kaergard said.
Kaergard said ranked choice voting is not the league's current focus for 2026, but they will support rank choice voting when it is presented.
Becky Simon, president of the Illinois League of Women Voters, said the statewide organization supports ranked choice voting but it takes a lot of money to implement, making it unlikely to get passed with a tight budget.
“We recognize it as one of several legitimate forms of voting,” Simon said. “That being said, the process in Illinois to actually implement rank choice voting is very complicated, and my best guess would be to say that we are several years off at best.”
Ashurst said voters need to continue contacting local and state representative to tell them they are interested in ranked choice voting.
Simon said while the league would support any local efforts to implement ranked choice voting, it is not a current priority. She said the current priorities when focusing on Illinois are affordability, housing and food deserts. She adds nationally the league is focused on another election concern, ending the Electoral College.
Advocates said ranked choice voting would benefit more third-party candidates because voters would make more than one selection on the ballot.
Sheldon Schafer, a resident of Peoria and member of the Green Party who ran for Illinois Secretary of State in 2014, said the referendum is only the beginning of electoral reform in Illinois.
Schafer said even though it was a nonbinding referendum, it shows that the people of Peoria have interest in implementing ranked choice voting.
“Bills have been proposed, but they never get out of committee, so legislators can stall things easily. But that doesn't mean you stop telling your legislators what you'd like to see,” Schafer said.
Schafer said he continues to work on referendums in Peoria to make it easier for third-party candidates to get elected.
