In recent Oak Park elections, many candidates ran for the three trustee positions. Choice is good for voters. But it has sometimes meant that we elected trustees with small percentages of the vote, making it impossible to tell if they had broad support from the community.
In 2019, there were 11 candidates for the village board. The three winners were elected with only 15.43%, 12.26%, and 11.89% of the total votes cast — less than 40% of the total votes! Using ranked choice voting (RCV), candidates must receive at least 25%+1 of the total votes. Requiring this higher threshold for winning means that our trustees are more representative of the community and, hopefully, more responsive to our needs.
Oak Park voters were left with less choice for Village President in 2021 when a candidate dropped out of the race. The departing candidate expressed concern that the vote could split to produce a result that a majority of the community does not support. If voters opt to use ranked-choice voting for Oak Park elections, candidates can run without worry of vote-splitting, and we can vote our true preferences without concern of wasting our votes.
While RCV is a good way to reduce polarization at a national or state level, that has not been much of an Oak Park concern and is not why proponents have worked to bring this to the ballot.
We should also be clear that this is a binding referendum. Oak Park is a home-rule municipality. That gives it authority to adopt procedures for selecting municipal officers that differ from those set forth in the Illinois election code, including a switch to ranked choice voting. A number of attorneys, including former Village Attorney Paul Stephanides, have researched whether RCV would be legal for Oak Park elections. They have not found that it would be illegal for Oak Park.
Bruce Lehman is a longtime resident of Oak Park and a volunteer with VOICE Oak Park and FairVote Illinois.