Fifteen candidates. One choice. One nominee.

That was the contorted shape of democracy in the Democratic primary election for Illinois’ 9th Congressional District on March 17.

I’m the Democratic nominee for the Illinois state Senate’s 9th District. My own race, thankfully, offered voters a straightforward choice between two qualified candidates. The 9th Congressional District election did not.

Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss won the nomination with just under 30% of the vote. Kat Abughazaleh finished three points behind. State Sen. Laura Fine of Glenview drew 20%. State Sen. Mike Simmons of Chicago earned 7%, and former FBI agent Phil Andrew and school board member Bushra Amiwala took 6% and 5%, respectively. The remaining candidates earned less than 2% each. All told, 70% of voters chose someone other than the winner.

We know who finished first. We don’t know who might have earned the broadest support.

That distinction matters. In a crowded field, our current system rewards whoever can lock down a narrow slice of the electorate, not whoever can build a majority coalition. It pressures voters into defensive choices: Not who do you want, but who can win? Strategic voting was a defining feature of the 9th Congressional District race. Some progressives pushed hard for voters to fall in behind Abughazaleh. Others made impassioned arguments for Biss to block her. Compelling candidates such as Simmons or Andrew or Amiwala competed for attention in a system that prizes viability, which is another way to say funding.

Ranked choice voting fixes that. Instead of picking one, voters rank candidates in order of preference. When no candidate reaches a majority, the lowest vote-getters are eliminated and their voters’ next choices are counted, until someone wins with real majority support. It’s actually pretty simple. We rank things all the time: to-do lists, movies, restaurants. We have preferences. Our politics should be able to capture and reflect them.

Imagine those same 9th Congressional District ballots cast under ranked choice. Simmons’ supporters could have backed him without worrying they were handing the race to someone they opposed. As lower-ranked candidates were eliminated, second and third choices would have reshaped the field. A recent Evanston Roundtable survey polled second choices in the race, and it’s not at all unlikely that Biss would have won, not with 30%, but with a true majority, his coalition expanding as lower-ranked candidates were eliminated. That’s not a criticism of his victory. It’s actually an argument for giving him, and every winner, something our current system can’t: a unifying mandate.

The benefits extend beyond crowded primaries. In presidential races, voters cast ballots for candidates who drop out before Election Day, their preferences lost entirely. Ranked choice effectively does the work of a runoff election, producing a majority winner without requiring a second trip to the polls, which saves time and money.

Our election system should give candidates a reason to reach beyond their base — instead, it rewards those who lock down a narrow slice of the electorate by appealing to the loudest, most ideologically committed voters. Ranked choice voting changes that. To win, you can’t just energize your base — you have to be someone’s second or third choice too. That means competing for a broad middle that too often feels ignored. Instead of rewarding whoever can slip through a fractured field, it rewards candidates who can build support that is wider, deeper and more durable.

Ranked voting is already improving elections in New York City, Alaska and Maine, and has been used by the U.S. military for decades. As a policy choice, it is not new or even particularly complicated. There will be implementation and educational hurdles to overcome, but nothing Illinoisans can’t manage.

Today’s pick-one ballot is a blunt instrument. Ranked choice asks voters to share not just who they want most, but also who they could live with — and who they couldn’t. That fuller picture changes what it means to win.

We can keep asking voters to make defensive choices. Or we can give them a better way to be counted.

Patrick Hanley is the Democratic nominee for Illinois state Senate in the 9th District.

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