Ranked-choice voting could help third party candidates and prevent voters from supporting candidates they don’t wish to, says RFI ED Alisa Kaplan
RFI ED Alisa Kaplan spoke to The Center Square about how voting for third-party candidates in Illinois can have unintended consequences, helping o support a candidate that “might not be the one you prefer to help.”
Explaining how ranked-choice voting (RCV) could help third party candidates and prevent voters from such unintended consequences, Kaplan said that with RCV, “you know exactly where your vote is going if your first choice isn’t going to win. You have more than one chance to affect the outcome.” This would prevent voters from feeling like “they have to vote strategically and try to figure out, ‘well I have to vote for the lesser of two evils and I have to vote for one of the two big parties, otherwise my vote will be wasted,’” said Kaplan.
RFI helped pass RCV via referendum in Evanston in 2022.
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