Your turn: Ranked Choice Voting means better candidates, less toxic politics
As the chair of the Ethics & Elections Committee in Springfield, I’m proud to be sponsoring an initiative to adopt Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) in presidential primaries in Illinois to ensure that no votes go to waste and that we elect better and more prepared candidates for the general election.
In the last competitive Illinois presidential primary a shocking number of votes were wasted: over 70,000 by Democrats and 30,000 by Republicans.
This is because state primaries take place over months, and during that time people are voting early or absentee for candidates that sometimes drop out before primary day or don’t receive enough votes in other states to be viable by the time our primary happens.
RCV prevents wasted votes because voters rank the candidates in order of their preference. If their first choice candidate drops out, the voter’s second choice will get their vote, and so on.
Therefore, the winner of an RCV election has the support of a larger and more diverse coalition of voters because they pick up second and third choice votes in order to win. This larger coalition of support means that winning candidates are more “battle tested,” having talked to more voters on the ground and through their campaigns.
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Both sides of the aisle want to put up their best candidate to be president, and RCV is a better system to ensure each party has a strong nominee.
Better yet, RCV is already a proven solution. Three red states and one blue state use RCV in their Democratic presidential primaries: Alaska, Kansas, Wyoming and Hawaii. In all four states’ primaries in 2020, voters showed a high level of understanding of the RCV ballots with no significant errors, showing that voters can easily adapt to the ranking system.
In addition, 98% of voters in these four states saw their vote contribute to a candidate winning delegates, compared to just 88% in single-choice primary states like Illinois.
This means that under RCV, the winning candidate has more buy-in from more people, making them a stronger nominee going forward.
Because winning RCV candidates need more buy-in to win (i.e. they need to earn not only first-choice votes, but also second- and third-choice votes) this has the extraordinary potential to reduce the toxic politics on both sides of the aisle. Indeed, RCV candidates do better when they run more positive campaigns that focus on the issues that matter most to voters.
Imagine fewer divisive campaigns, fewer personal attacks and less infighting. Imagine more campaigns that are focused on ideas, problem solving and solutions.
It may sound too good to be true, but when winning a campaign means winning support from a broader coalition of voters instead of simply inspiring fear or disgust, the future really does look brighter.
State Rep. Maurice West II, D-Rockford, represents Illinois' 67th House District, an area that encompasses much of west and south Rockford, Cherry Valley and parts of Loves Park and Machesney Park.
This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Your turn: Ranked Choice Voting means better candidates, politics
