Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, who ditched the Democratic Party to run for governor as an Independent, is pushing to change Michigan elections to a ranked choice voting system.

Duggan put his support behind an ongoing effort by Rank MI Vote to shift to ranked choice voting during an address before the Lansing Chamber of Commerce on Thursday, noting he wrote his senior thesis on the topic in 1980, Michigan Advance reports.

The mayor of Michigan’s largest city suggested the current election system rewards division, at a time he’s focused on a campaign to unify Michiganders.

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“Whoever the Democratic and Republican nominees are, I’ll debate them when the time comes, but my campaign isn’t going to be telling you why the Republicans or Democrats are awful,” he said. “My campaign is going to be why Michigan will be better if we pull together.”

Duggan pointed to a lawsuit filed by Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks, D-Grand Rapids, in an attempt to force the Republican controlled state House to send bills to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer that were left behind by Democrats during last year’s lame duck session.

The fighting, he said, is one of many reasons why polling suggests voters are open to something different.

“I’m going to run a campaign where I’m not going to demonize anybody,” Duggan said. “I’m going to tell people in Michigan what I plan to do, and the people will make a choice whether they want a change or whether they’re happy with the way things are going.”

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Ranked choice voting allows voters to rank candidates based on preference, and if their first choice doesn’t win, their vote transfers to their next choice as the candidate with the least votes is eliminated.

That cycle repeats until a single candidate accumulates more than 50% of the vote.

Proponents contend ranked choice voting reduces political polarization, boosts voter turnout and produces results more in line with what voters want.

Opponents note the process is more complicated and partisan, arguing it produces a result with less transparency that encourages fringe candidates.

Duggan’s support for ranked choice voting comes as Rank MI Vote works to lay the groundwork for a 2026 ballot initiative that would amend the Michigan Constitution to change the system.

“Through ranked choice voting, we’re hoping to empower voters and give them the ability to have better candidates, more options, their voice be heard, and have policies that reflect them,” Pat Zabawa, Rank MI Vote’s associate director, told Bridge Michigan.

The group is hosting a series of town halls and policy summits across the state to promote that effort, which has come with regional field offices and more than 1,000 volunteers.

Rank MI Vote has spearheaded successful initiatives in East Lansing, Kalamazoo, Royal Oak, Ann Arbor, and Ferndale to switch to rank choice voting, but those initiatives are currently blocked by the Michigan Constitution.

The aspiring 2026 ballot initiative is backed by the nonprofit Voters Not Politicians, which led a statewide ballot initiative in 2018 that created a Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission that has since wasted millions of tax dollars to create legislative maps courts have ruled unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.

Voters Not Politicians also led a ballot initiative in 2022 that created loopholes in the state’s voter ID laws through misleading advertising that claimed it would mandate identification for voting.

While the campaign to put ranked choice voting on the ballot is well under way, what exactly it would mean for the state’s primaries and other details remain a mystery.

Organizers have yet to decide whether to keep partisan primaries, or to adopt an open primary system that puts all candidates on the same ticket, with the top ranked choices moving to the general election, Bridge reports.

The proposal from Rank MI Vote aims to impose rank choice voting for federal elections, as well as elections for governor, attorney general, secretary of state, and state legislative offices.

Nominees for Michigan AG, secretary of state, and other offices are decided at party conventions, and some have questioned how the ranked choice voting initiative would impact that process.

There’s also concerns the more complicated ranked choice system could further fuel public distrust about election integrity amid efforts by Democrats to loosen election laws.

“It does seem like, in an environment where people are claiming that an election was stolen, that adding a little bit of extra technocratic complication maybe invites more of that,” University of Chicago political science professor Andrew Eggers told Bridge.

“There’s definitely evidence that it’s kind of viewed as a progressive reform,” he said.