RFI Executive Director talks primary reforms, ranked-choice voting
Does Illinois need an overhaul of its primary election process? Reform for Illinois Executive Director Alisa Kaplan spoke to the Center for Illinois Politics about potential primary reforms.
“It’s not at all clear that reforming primaries would be a silver bullet” to solving political polarization, Kaplan said. But using ranked-choice voting in partisan primaries could be a first step towards making the voting process more fair.
“Let’s say you have five Democrats in a primary. One of the problems you have now is that the candidates have the potential to split the vote,” said Kaplan. “That could mean you’d have a party nominee win with a small plurality, a minority of the votes cast, where more people didn’t want this person to win than did. Ranked choice voting gets rid of all that.”
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