Chicago’s Path to Fairer Elections: Embracing Ranked-Choice Voting 

In early 2023, Chicago witnessed an animated local election season with no shortage of personal attacks, stark ideological differences, and drama typical of the city’s politics. However, like many other Chicago voters, I had a difficult time choosing a candidate. With nine major contenders, it was always unlikely that one would receive a majority of the votes cast in the first round. When this occurs in Chicago, the top two vote-getters advance to a runoff election to determine the ultimate winner. The system has a major impact on voters’ calculations in the first round. Is it better to vote for the candidate you would most like to win, or should you support your most preferred candidate of those with a realistic chance of making the runoff? For less high-profile races, this information may not even be readily available; there were no public polls on most aldermanic races last spring. Reasonable minds can disagree on the right answer to this question, but it remains a constraint on voter decisions. 

It would be foolish, however, to pretend there aren’t better alternatives to the two-round system currently utilized in Chicago. There are multiple well-tested voting systems that allow people to express a wider array of preferences. Instant-runoff voting, the most common type of ranked-choice voting, is the option that makes the most sense for Chicago. Under this system, voters would no longer choose just one candidate for each office on their ballot. Rather, they would numerically rank each of the available options (or as many as they wish to include). Results are then tallied in a series of rounds; the candidate ranked first by the fewest people is eliminated, and their votes are transferred to the voters’ second-choice candidates. That process continues until a single candidate can amass a majority of the votes cast. 

Under the prevailing system of elections in the U.S., candidates are incentivized to consolidate ideological or demographic blocs of support. This is a natural part of building a winning coalition of voters. A conservative candidate, for example, may attempt to drive other conservatives out of the race by maximizing their appeal to a base of activists, carrying them to victory in a primary election. In practice, this can leave voters with only one candidate who both represents their views and has a realistic chance to win. Even early in a campaign, candidates who don’t garner enough support can be dubbed “spoilers.” They risk taking votes from ideologically similar rivals, increasing the chance that someone with wildly different policy preferences could win the election.  

There are numerous domestic examples of this occurring. Many pundits attribute Al Gore’s loss in the 2000 presidential election to Ralph Nader’s presence in the race. In a 2008 US Senate election, Democrat Al Franken narrowly bested his Republican opponent, but an analysis from Time found that the strong showing from an independent likely changed the outcome. In the 2014 Maine gubernatorial election, independent candidate Eliot Cutler’s vote share was greater than the margin between the two major party candidates, leading the Republican candidate to win without a majority of votes. The principal benefit of instant-runoff voting is how it changes these incentives. People can rank their true preference first without the fear of helping their least preferred candidate win. 

The strategic decision-making required under the current election system makes the information captured by elections quite noisy. People’s votes may not reflect their true policy preferences, but rather their choice between binary options. Sometimes, the action that seems like an optimal strategy just isn’t. For example, the politically progressive “lane” in this past mayoral election was occupied by two major candidates: County Commissioner Brandon Johnson and Congressman Jesús “Chuy” García (with Rep. Kam Buckner pulling some votes as well). Ultimately, only Johnson made the runoff. However, García initially seemed to be the frontrunner. It’s not unimaginable that a Johnson supporter voted for García believing he had the greatest chance of making the runoff. If just a few more people opted for this strategy, progressives would have been denied a spot entirely. These sorts of dangers don’t exist under instant-runoff voting. 

Another well-documented side effect of instant-runoff voting is an increase in positive campaign messaging and general civility. This makes intuitive sense: candidates depend not just on receiving first-round votes, but also on being voters’ second or third choice. They won’t attack other candidates nearly as harshly because they cannot afford to alienate their supporters. There is some evidence that this makes running for office a more attractive prospect for historically underrepresented groups, particularly people of color and women. 

Instant-runoff voting may also help increase voter turnout in municipal elections, which have historically struggled with low participation. Part of this is owed to positive campaigns: when voters don’t feel like they’re choosing from a pool of bad options, they are more willing to show up. However, an instant-runoff system also makes it easier to vote by ensuring that people only need to show up once. The runoff system forces people to go through the process of voting twice: once during the initial election and again during the runoff election. For working people or those who take care of children, making time to cast a ballot on two separate Tuesdays may be a prohibitive cost. In comparison to the current voting system, instant-runoff voting massively reduces the cost of voting. While it is possible that a new ballot design may be too complicated for some voters, there is evidence to suggest this is not a widespread problem. 

Despite its unfamiliarity to most Chicagoans, results from comparable jurisdictions suggest that implementing instant-runoff voting here is entirely possible. Multiple states have adopted the system for their federal elections, and it has taken an even greater hold in municipalities across the country. Notably, New York City, perhaps the most comparable city in the country to Chicago in terms of political culture, adopted instant-runoff voting for their municipal elections. They elected their first mayor and city council under the system in 2021. Evanston, a Chicago suburb known for pioneering progressive policies, overwhelmingly approved the system last year. If Chicagoans create enough political will, our government can adopt instant-runoff voting and make our next mayoral election the easiest yet.