Illinois (ECWd) –
Illinois State Representative Maurice A. West has introduced HB 2807 which calls for Ranked Choice Voting for Presidential Primaries. One can only wonder if this is the first step to another bill that takes this option to apply to all elected positions in Illinois. The bill status can be viewed at this link.
What is Ranked Choice Voting?
If two candidates are on the ballot the highest vote winner wins.
If three candidates or more are on the ballot, the election may take some time before ever being completed due to the process. The lowest vote winner is tossed from the ballot and their votes are transferred to the next ranked active candidate. This happens clear up to 5 people on the ballot.
As an example, below are the vote totals for a three-way race for President in the primary.
- Candidate A – 1,000,000 votes
- Candidate B – 500,001 votes
- Candidate C – 500,000 votes
Candidate C is dropped from the tabulation and all their votes are transferred to Candidate B. In the above example, Candidate B would be declared the winner because the transfer votes of the loser in the first round tabulation bring Candidate B to a one-vote lead over the people’s clear first choice.
This process is the same for a 5 candidate race and the vote counting and transfers go on and on until a person has 50% of the vote. If you thought vote counting was taking longer than necessary, this process could add weeks if not months to the selection of a winner, if that is what you want to call them.
By all indications, this is yet another way to manipulate vote totals that have the clear potential of swaying the results contrary to the voter’s wishes.
The Elections and Ethics committee is hearing this bill today.
We encourage the public to voice their position on this proposed legislation. Witness slips can be filled out at this link either for (Proponent) or against (Opponent).
HB 28707 Ranked Choice Voting
