Cara Brown McCormick
Skokie, Ill. — Skokie voters went to the polls on April 1 amidst a closely watched mayoral election to decide whether or not to adopt ranked choice voting (RCV). With 100% of precincts reporting, 58% of participating voters said ‘Yes’ to changing how the city conducts elections.
The vote follows decisive RCV victories in neighboring Evanston in 2022 and Oak Park in 2024.
The binding referendum asked whether the village of Skokie should elect its mayor, village clerk, and board of trustees using RCV — an electoral system that gives voters the opportunity to rank candidates in order of preference, rather than just choosing a single candidate.
After the first-choice votes are counted, if no candidate has received a majority of the votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and their votes are redistributed to the remaining candidates according to voters' second choices.
This process is repeated until one candidate receives a majority.
Read the full text of the Skokie ballot question approved by 58 percent of voters here.
Skokie’s Village Board of Trustees previously declined to put the referendum on the November 2024 ballot. This led pro-democracy activists to gather 2,400 signatures from Skokie’s registered voters to place the RCV referendum on the April 1 ballot.
Skokie residents also chose a new independent mayor for the first time since the 1990s. Ann Tennes, who ran as an independent, defeated Charles Isho and David “Azi” Lifsics, winning the three-way race with 48.57% of the vote.
When Skokie implements its new citizen-initiated law, neither Tennes nor any other candidate can win an election outright with less than 50% of the vote.
About Skokie
Located 15 miles from downtown Chicago, Skokie has a population of 67,824, according to the 2020 census. The village is perhaps best known for the 1977 U.S. Supreme Court case, National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie, which affirmed First Amendment protections during a highly controversial attempted march by neo-Nazis through a community with a large population of Holocaust survivors.
This moment in history was the impetus for the founding of the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center, which today includes the Take a Stand Center and Take a Stand Lab, interactive exhibits designed to encourage visitors to participate actively in democracy.