Prairie State Wire

Senator Laura Murphy (D-Des Plaines) and Representative Maurice West (D-Rockford) took to the pages of the Chicago Tribune to express their desire to make radical changes to our election system.

They may try to paint a rosy picture of a system without the barrage of negative advertisements and an improvement in election security, but in reality, ranked-choice voting (RCV) produces none of those things. 

It disenfranchises already vulnerable communities and injects chaos at a time when confidence in our elections is needed most. 

It’s not hard to find examples of why this system should not be implemented in Illinois. 

First, the New York City mayoral race. After eight rounds of tabulation, more than 140,000 New Yorkers’ ballots were thrown out. Why? Either those residents didn’t fully understand how they were supposed to rank the candidates, or maybe they simply had no interest in ranking more than one. 

The president of the New York State chapter of the NAACP, Hazel Dukes, lambasted the new voting changes exclaiming: 

“Our communities have shed blood for the right to vote. Now, when we are able to participate and our participation rates are rising, they want to change the rules?”

Voters who didn’t want to play the complex RCV game had their votes thrown out. That’s not improving democracy. Would Murphy and West classify those ballots as “wasted” votes too? 

Moving to the west coast, an Alameda County, California school board candidate was declared a winner but the results were later retracted due to a technical error that produced the wrong results. The race required an audit and the actual victor had to use his own resources to bring the case to court. Does that instill confidence in the integrity of our elections? 

Stopping RCV isn’t a red or blue issue. Even progressive California Governor, Gavin Newsom, has vetoed the expansion of RCV stating, 

“I am concerned that it has often led to voter confusion and that the promise that ranked-choice voting leads to greater democracy is not necessarily fulfilled.”

Dukes is right. Why now make radical changes to our election system rather than strengthening the system we currently have? The onus is on the proponents of RCV to prove we need this system. They have failed to make the argument and provide a solution in search of a problem. 

Illinois residents should reject these radical changes and urge lawmakers to strengthen and protect the integrity of elections. 

Andy Bakker is a member of the Coalition to Stop Rank-Choice Voting.