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Update on Ranked-Choice Voting and D.C.

Updated: Nov 18




By: Miriam Edelman

Recently, the D.C. Board of Elections (BOE) certified Initiative 83, which would bring ranked-choice voting and semi-open primary elections to Washington, D.C. It determined that supporters had compiled enough valid signatures, saying that 27,773 of the more than 40,000 signatures were valid. Thus, the Make All Votes Campaign submitted more than the required 22,500 signatures. This piece follows up on DCNOW’s blog’s posts, entitled “Overview of Ranked Choice Voting (Ranked Choice Voting Part One)” and  “Bring Ranked Choice Voting to Washington, D.C. (Ranked Choice Voting Part Two).”

 

Initiative 83 would improve D.C.’s elections by opening up primaries and by letting voters rank their preferred candidates. It would permit registered independents to vote in primary elections. This reform is important since many Democratic primary election winners are victorious in the general election. This ballot referendum would also permit voters to rank at most five candidates and would ensure that the election’s winner had majority support. This change could help as some people are elected to local office in D.C. with small percentages of the vote.

 

If most D.C. voters approve this initiative, the BOE would be required to certify the result. Then, in January 2025, the D.C. Council Chair would transmit the law to Congress. After a Congressional review period, and assuming all goes well, the referendum would become law by March 2025. The June 2026 primary elections would be the first with reforms from Initiative 83.

 

Ward seven’s D.C. Council Democratic primary election in June 2024 shows how important ranked-choice voting is. Ten candidates ran for the Democratic nomination in this open-seat election, which happened because current Ward seven D.C. Councilmember Vincent Gray is not running for reelection. The winner, Wendell Felder, received just 23.69 percent of the vote. Therefore, over 75 percent of the voters did not choose Felder. If he wins the November 2024 general election, which is likely, he would not have a mandate.

 

Initiative 83 still might not appear on ballots in November 2024. The D.C. Democratic Pary’s lawsuit, which tries to stop this initiative, is pending in court. The Vote NO on Initiative 83 efforts most likely will continue.

 

Congress continued to interfere, as it has done on crime, non-citizen voting, home rule, college protests, and other local D.C. matters during this Congress. U.S. Representative Michael Lawler (R-NY) yet again tried to prevent ranked-choice voting from coming to D.C. Recently, he filed an amendment to a House appropriations bill that would prevent D.C. from having ranked-choice voting or continuing with Initiative 83. This amendment most likely will not be successful. As was stated in DCNOW’s piece, entitled “Bring Ranked Choice Voting to Washington, D.C. (Ranked Choice Voting Part Two),” on July 6, 2023, Lawler introduced H.R. 4493, the District of Columbia One Vote One Choice Act that would prohibit “the District of Columbia from using ranked-choice voting in its elections.”

 

On July 6, 2023, Lawler issued a press release about his bill:

This past May, advocates for ranked choice voting in D.C. filed a ballot initiative to bring this practice to our nation’s capital. If allowed to appear on the 2024 ballot and passed, changes would begin to take effect on the 2026 primary ballot. Many across the political spectrum have come out against this initiative, including the DC Democratic party.

In this release, he said:

The proposed Washington, D.C. ballot initiative to implement ranked choice voting in the city violates the principles of democracy- of one person, one vote, one choice. Ranked choice voting allows certain Americans to cast multiple ballots for office, unconstitutionally diluting the influence of other voters. There is a reason even the D.C. Democrats oppose ranked choice voting. Elections are about choosing the candidates and policies you support, not ranking them in order of preference.”

Representative Claudia Tenney (R-NY) said:

As co-chair of the House Election Integrity Caucus, we are united against the harmful practice of ranked choice voting. Congressman Lawler’s D.C. One Vote One Choice Act is a great step in restoring voters’ trust in the process and outlaw [sic] Ranked Choice Voting which only leads to more election chaos and confusion.”

 

On July 7, 2023, Lisa Rice, who proposed Initiative 83, had the following official statement about H.R. 4493:

The purpose of the Make All Votes Count Act of 2024 is to let DC voters decide whether to make it easier to hold our local politicians accountable. Rep. Lawler’s proposed legislation highlights the need for DC statehood. It’s no surprise to see another misguided attempt to meddle with The District’s limited autonomy and democracy. Ranked Choice Voting is not a partisan issue and our campaign’s coalition spans the entire political spectrum. Moreover, our proposed ballot initiative will open up DC’s hotly contested primary elections and help end the voter suppression of over 86,000 DC voters who choose not to belong to a political party. If you really care about one person, one vote: let the people of DC vote on it

 

Since Lawler is a critic of ranked-choice voting in general, he follows Republicans’ pattern of trying to impose their preferred policies onto D.C. On May 25, 2023, he introduced the H.R. 3704 – One Vote One Choice Act bill that would “amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to prohibit States from using ranked choice voting to carry out an election for Federal office.” This bill has three-co-sponsors, all of whom are Republicans from New York State.

 

In a May 25, 2023 press release about his legislation, Lawler said “For centuries, citizens of the United States have been able to cast their votes with one vote and one voice. But in recent years, there has been an effort to enact ranked choice voting, a method which distorts election outcomes.” and

In 2021's mayoral primary in New York City, voters had to wait weeks in order to discover who won, sowing chaos, confusion, and undermining confidence in the result. Outcomes like that are problematic for everyone involved, and are exactly why we should ban the practice of ranked choice voting at the federal level in the first place. Ensuring confidence in our elections is a critical function of government, and I'm proud to introduce this bill to accomplish that goal.

 

The New York primary in 2021 was the first time that ranked-choice voting occurred citywide in New York City. Thus, it is not reasonable to think that these elections would operate perfectly. The new voting method changed the outcome of just three out of 63 races. In those three races, the first-round leader did not win the election. Ranked-choice voting changed how candidates campaigned, with multiple candidates in the same races forming alliances with each other (something that would usually not happen in non-ranked-choice voting elections). For example, Mayoral candidates Andrew Yang and Kathryn Garcia campaigned together, seemingly to prevent polls leader Eric Adams from winning the primary. Adams won that primary.

 

Lawler has even more history of trying to fix miniscule elections problems and to interfere with D.C. elections. Lawler is concerned about non-citizen voting, which as was stated in DCNOW’s “Congress Continues to Attempt to Prevent Non-U.S. Citizens from Voting in Local D.C. Elections” piece, “is rare and illegal in federal elections.” On July 10, 2024, he posted the following on X: “Letting non-citizens vote opens the door to letting foreign powers potentially influence our elections. That's why passing the SAVE Act today was so important.” That post also included a video of him attacking non-citizens voting, specifically mentioning D.C. He said:

Non-citizens should not be voting in our elections….However, in recent years, New York City and Washington, D.C., have both passed laws granting non-citizens, including foreign diplomats, the right to vote. It’s absurd and must be stopped….My colleagues on the left often say they’re all about defending democracy, and yet, hundreds of them voted against this bill, making clear they believe non-citizens should be eligible to vote in our elections.

On July 11, 2024, he posted the following on X and Instagram: “Letting non-citizens vote could make our nation more susceptable [sic] to election interference by foreign governments.”

 

Lawler is also an original cosponsor of H.R. 4563 – ACE Act. DCNOW’s piece, entitled “Congress Continues to Attempt to Prevent Non-U.S. Citizens from Voting in Local D.C. Elections,” discussed this bill, which the Committee on House Administration’s July 10, 2023, press release labeled “the most conservative election integrity bill to be seriously considered in the House in over 20 years.” The press release described the bill’s following two anti-D.C. sections:

Voting in elections should be reserved only for U.S. citizens. Currently, Washington D.C. and New York City allow non-citizens to vote. D.C.’s law is so ridiculous, it will let embassy staff from Russia and China vote after living in the Capital for just 30 days. Our bill prohibits federal funds from going to places that allow non-citizens to vote and stops non-citizens from voting in D.C.

 

The second pillar of the ACE Act will exercise Congress’s constitutional responsibility over D.C. Reforms will not only prohibit non-citizens from voting, but also implement strong photo voter ID laws, require annual voter list maintenance, and stop the unsolicited mailing of ballots to unmaintained lists.

 

D.C. should use ranked-choice voting. However, despite the pros of the Initiative 83's primary election part, that proposal is problematic because it would dilute voters who have registered with a political party. The initiative's two parts should not have been combined into a single ballot measure.

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