In D.C. election, Initiative 83 push for voting changes is biggest wild card

But the initiative has rattled a group that three-quarters of D.C.’s registered voters belong to: the D.C. Democratic Party.

In an overwhelmingly blue city, the initiative has pitted the I-83 organizers chiefly against D.C.’s political establishment and caused fractures within the Democratic Party, as some of its members push for changes they say will benefit the city’s elections. The party, on the other hand, has framed the initiative as a threat and has emerged as its chief opponent. It has tried to sue to block I-83. It’s running radio ads urging a “no” vote. Its most influential members — Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson — both oppose it.

“I think ranked-choice voting is complicated and is a solution in search of a problem,” Mendelson said.

I-83 organizer Lisa Rice, however, was unfazed by the Democratic Party pushback — seeing it as an almost natural result of the proposal to rethink how D.C.’s elections work.

“What we find, not just here or in other places, is when you challenge the dominant party, when you challenge the establishment, they’re going to react,” said Rice, a Ward 7 advisory neighborhood commissioner and independent voter. “They don’t like it.”

Where the council stands

If the initiative is approved Nov. 5, D.C. could join a growing number of jurisdictions nationwide that have moved to ranked-choice voting, including Maine, Alaska, New York City, Minneapolis and neighboring Arlington County. Proponents say the requirement that the winner of an election garner at least 50 percent of the vote leads candidates to work harder and reach more voters.

The campaign has gotten a boost of over half a million dollars from national organizations that support ranked-choice voting across the country, including Fair Vote Action and All One God Faith, an affiliate of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps.

Nationwide, D.C. joins several states, including Colorado and Idaho, in having a ballot initiative next month to implement ranked-choice voting — although Alaska is voting on whether to repeal it and Missouri on whether to prohibit it, showing how the relatively new voting method is the subject of heated debate. Opponents argue that it is an unnecessary voting change that can lead to voter confusion and mistakes, dulling participation rather than broadening it.

D.C.’s initiative, however, also includes opening party primaries to independent voters.

The inclusion of both changes in the same initiative has caused some hand-wringing among those who support one change but not the other — including on the D.C. Council, which will have the ultimate say on whether to implement I-83 if voters approve it.

Even though several lawmakers backed a 2021 bill from council member Christina Henderson (I-At Large) that would have brought ranked-choice voting to D.C., some of those co-sponsors are lukewarm on I-83 because it includes semi-open primaries.

“I don’t know why they put these two very different things in one ballot initiative,” said council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), who co-sponsored the ranked-choice voting bill but says he’s undecided on I-83. “I definitely support ranked-choice voting. I don’t support open primaries. I don’t know what to do with this.”

Council member Brianne K. Nadeau (D-Ward 1), who had also co-sponsored Henderson’s bill, declined to share her position, but she offered a clue: “I’ve been a strong supporter of ranked-choice voting. But the ballot initiative is more than just that.”

Council member Matt Frumin (D-Ward 3) supports it, and Henderson has been perhaps the loudest supporter of the initiative. At a seniors’ forum in Anacostia last month, she noted that she won her crowded 24-candidate at-large race in 2020 with just under 15 percent of the vote.

“If we continue to have that level of competitiveness, we need to explore a different way of passing our ballots to ensure that all residents are having the opportunity to have their voices heard,” Henderson said. That should also include allowing independents like her to vote in the primary, she said — “especially since my tax dollars are paying for an election I can’t participate in.”

Council member Anita Bonds (D-At Large), who chairs the council committee with oversight of elections issues, said she didn’t want to stake out a public position — but raised concerns that didn’t quite point to support.

“Sometimes we move a little faster than we can determine what the consequences might be,” Bonds said.

Debating the merits

The I-83 campaign has frequently faced the question of why organizers combined the two election changes — and other voters have the opposite challenge from Allen’s: backing allowing independents to vote in a party primary but feeling skeptical of ranked-choice voting, which many voters have no experience using.

Rice has said the campaign combined the changes because they each fall under the umbrella of expanding democracy. She has likened the exclusion of independents from primary elections — which in deep-blue D.C. are often the deciding races — to disenfranchisement. And ranked-choice voting, she says, avoids an outcome such as Henderson’s highly splintered 2020 at-large race and encourages candidates to reach more voters.

“We do encounter people who are very gung-ho on one part and not so sure on the other. What we do is talk about our strategy here is really to have politicians work harder for our votes, work harder for us,” Rice said.

When it comes to allowing independents to vote in primaries, the proponents have often sought to appeal to D.C. voters on one of the city’s most enduring causes: ending taxation without representation. Primary elections are taxpayer-funded. Democrats can’t be against taxation without representation and be for excluding certain taxpayers in those elections, argued the Rev. Wendy Hamilton, a Ward 8 Democrat who advocates on behalf of the campaign.

“If we’re going to talk about statehood, and we’re going to talk about taxation without representation, we can’t talk out of both sides of our mouth,” Hamilton said.

Charles Wilson, chairman of the D.C. Democratic Party, sees it differently: as a violation of D.C.'s home rule charter, which makes primaries partisan contests.

“The impact would dilute the voice of the Democratic Party in the District of Columbia,” he said. “The initiative, that’s exactly what they want to do. People who are dedicated to the Democratic Party in the District of Columbia don’t like that, and don’t appreciate it.”

Deirdre Brown, the founder of the Vote No on Initiative 83 countercampaign, said it’s simple: If people want to vote in a party’s nominating contest, they have to be a member of the party.

Both she and Wilson also expressed the same concern that rather than expanding democracy, ranked-choice voting would do the opposite. They point to data from the D.C. Board of Elections in the city’s at-large race, in which voters can select two candidates and the two with the most votes win. Data shows that in Wards 7 and 8 — D.C.’s most economically disadvantaged and majority Black wards — voter turnout is lower in general, and in the at-large race, voters in those wards participate less by under-voting at higher rates, selecting only one candidate as opposed to two.

Brown and Wilson argued that ranked-choice voting would exacerbate those participation challenges. “That’s a huge issue — it really is,” Brown said. “We think that ranked-choice voting will actually hurt the voices of the residents that we think need to be heard the most.”

Hamilton said she didn’t buy the fear: The problem contributing to low participation is a lack of voter education and outreach, she said — something that she said would come with the initiative if it passes.

Internal fractures

In a party with a growing tent, Wilson said, there’s no doubt the party’s vocal opposition has also caused internal fractures.

Case in point: a political fracas stirred up by the party’s anti-I-83 mailer.

The mailer listed dozens of individual party members beneath its “vote no” message — incensing some members who actually support I-83, leaving them feeling falsely represented as the party ramps up its messaging.

Vanessa Lopez, a Democrat in Mount Pleasant who serves on the state committee, said she was shocked after she saw her name listed beneath the anti-I-83 message. Rather than a threat to the party, “I think it’s really valuable to get more people involved in the primary election,” said Lopez, who is organizing with D.C. for Democracy to encourage voters to approve the initiative and educate them on ranked-choice voting.

Wilson said the mailer that listed Democratic Party members’ names was meant to reflect a collective position — the party has previously voted not to support I-83 — and was sent out after the party voted to amplify its opposition message. He said in addition to the radio ads, the party will also begin staking “vote no” signs outside of polling places and is considering a digital ad.

Hamilton, who is also on the state committee in Ward 8, said she thinks party leaders underestimated Initiative 83 and are now left reacting. “I think the party was not prepared for I-83 to collect 40,000 signatures in this city,” she said. If even half of those petition signers vote to approve the initiative, she said, it will probably pass.

Whether it will clear the D.C. Council, however, is a different story. Because I-83 is expected to have a fiscal impact, it can’t go into effect without the council appropriating funds for it.

Mendelson said he didn’t want to speculate on what the council will do. But he had a sense of what the council will hear — both from voters and the initiative’s funders.

“Initiatives almost always get passed,” he said. “So then Dr. Bronner will be in my ear: The voters voted for this — you need to fund it.”