An ordinance designed to push the Cook County Clerk’s Office to work with the city to troubleshoot a ranked-choice voting ballot before the April 2025 municipal election passed at Monday’s Evanston City Council meeting.
Evanston residents voted in November 2022 to implement the voting system for municipal elections beginning with the upcoming April 2025 election cycle. In ranked-choice voting, voters rank their preferred candidates in numerical order. Once votes are counted, if a candidate surpasses the 50% threshold, they are announced the winner. If no majority is reached, the candidate with the fewest number of top ranked votes is dropped from the ballot. Those votes then transfer to the voters second choice. The cycle is repeated until a candidate reaches majority.
Councilmember Devon Reid has been vocally opposed to the method the city has taken to this point, arguing an ordinance fleshing out rules, ballot design and more should have been completed before the decision went to voters.
“We need to take some time to really evaluate this,” Reid said. “It’s going to be exposed before the next election that there’s a problem and we are going to have massive confusion. It’s going to be undemocratic.”
Some of the questions Reid says need answered include what happens if two candidates tie, how many candidates can be ranked and what needs to be done in the case of a spoiled ballot. Spoiled ballots can occur for a variety of reasons, such as if more than one candidate is chosen for the same rank or a ranking is skipped.
He has cited case law to bolster his argument and raised concerns that if the referendum were to go before the courts, it would be deemed invalid. Reid told the council he plans to send a letter to the Cook County Clerk’s Office expressing his concerns and asking the office to review the referendum’s validity.
Mayor Daniel Biss said at this point, the County Clerk’s Office hasn’t expressed any concerns but he hopes with the passage of the ordinance the county will be pushed to collaborate with the city to work through the kinks. Part of what has prevented this was the death of former Cook County Clerk Karen Yarbrough.
The collaboration is important, according to Biss, because it was unknown what options are available on Dominion electronic voting machines used by the county. This is what he hoped to flesh out with the county after passing the referendum, as opposed to passing a more detailed referendum that would end up being impossible to implement.
Biss shot down the option to litigate with the county clerk’s office in favor of pursuing a working relationship.
Reid ended up being the lone vote against the ordinance and argued if the city really believes it handled the situation properly, it should litigate with the county to force the system implementation.
“The only reason we wouldn’t do that is because we know damn well we did it wrong,” Reid said.
Councilmember Bobby Burns believes Reid is correct in assuming the referendum will end up in the courts but it will then be up to the judge to decide if the intended collaboration is lawful.
Despite this, he voted in favor of the ordinance saying, “if they don’t want to do this, they’re not going to do it. It’s not like we’re forcing this on the Cook County Clerk.”
Even with the ordinance passing, Biss expressed his doubts as to whether the new system will be ready by the April election.
“Our choices are give up entirely or at least make a good faith effort,” he said.