WASHINGTON – Voters will head to the polls on Tuesday to decide if Washington, D.C. will change its voting process and pass Initiative 83, which would allow independents to vote in primaries and introduce ranked-choice voting to the district. The initiative has sown division in the majority Democratic district.
Along with Washington, ranked-choice voting is on the ballot in several states this election including Nevada, Oregon and Colorado. Only Maine and Alaska currently use ranked-choice voting for state and federal elections. If passed, I-83 would be implemented in the 2026 elections.
Proponents of the initiative argue it will create positive change to the electoral system by giving the thousands of independent voters in Washington a say in primary elections and encourage candidates to campaign beyond their base and across wards.
The D.C. Democratic Party has emerged in staunch opposition to the initiative, including prominent figures like Mayor Muriel Bowser and D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson. Critics argue ranked-choice voting is too complicated and unfit for Washington voters.
“This is not a local initiative,” Bowser said in an interview with WAMU radio on Friday. “This is not of Washington, not for Washington.”
What is I-83?
Like several ballot measures in other states, I-83 has two parts: semi-open primaries and ranked-choice voting.
The first piece deals with who can vote in primary elections. Washington currently has closed primaries where voters must be registered with a party to participate. I-83 would open up primaries to independent voters.
The second part of the initiative is ranked-choice voting, a system that would allow Washington voters to rank up to five candidates in the district’s general elections. Unlike the current plurality system, a candidate must earn over 50% of the vote to win.
Ranked-choice voting typically works through a series of rounds until someone emerges with the majority. If no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote in the first round, the candidate with the lowest share of the votes is eliminated. Then the eliminated candidate’s votes are redistributed to the second-ranked choice on each of those ballots. This process continues until one candidate surpasses 50% of the vote and wins.
Why yes?
Purple signs have gone up on street corners, lamp posts and front yards across Washington urging residents to vote “YES on 83.” The posters are part of the Make All Votes Count DC campaign, led by I-83 proposer Lisa Rice. The campaign has raised over $1.5 million according to a report filed to the D.C. Office of Campaign Finance.
I-83 proponents argue that it’s important to make every vote count, including the nearly 75,000 independent voters, according to the Make All Votes Count DC campaign.
“It won’t take away anything,” said Ruby Coleman, senior and master’s student at American University who works in voter engagement efforts for Make All Votes Count DC. “It will just simply add more people and more opinions and voices to the electorate.”
Proponents also argue that ranked-choice voting incentivizes candidates to campaign deeper and wider in wards throughout Washington since they have to get a majority of the vote to win.
Coleman said that ranked-choice voting forces candidates to build coalitions with historically marginalized and neglected communities east of the river. This will hopefully lead to greater representation of those communities’ needs in city policy, she said.
T.J. Maloney, a volunteer for the Make All Votes Count DC campaign, said that the ranked-choice voting system is not as complicated as critics make it out to be.
“I think people rank things in their life every day, and we can make a list one through five,” Maloney said. “And in other cities, folks have figured this out.”
Maloney added that if I-83 passes, the Board of Elections should implement an educational program to explain how the system works to voters.
Cynthia McClintock, professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, researched the effects of ranked-choice voting in Maine.
“Our core finding is that ranked-choice voting, like runoff, means that a candidate who has some strong support among a minority of the voters now is less likely to win,” McClintock said
Under plurality voting, whichever candidate receives the largest share of the votes wins. But in a large and divided field of candidates, this could mean that someone with a strong base could win with just 30% of the vote, McClintock said. Ranked-choice voting prevents an extreme candidate with minority support from winning right off the bat – that is, if people rank.
Why no?
Critics of I-83 argue that the process of ranked-choice voting is too complicated and will negatively impact marginalized and low-income communities.
Deirdre Brown, chair of the “Vote No On 83” counter-campaign, said there’s already high numbers of under-voting and over-voting in marginalized communities for the at-large seat where voters pick two candidates.
Brown worries that if voters have to rank five candidates, these communities might have their ballots invalidated at higher rates due to errors, especially in Wards 6, 7 and 8.
“We’re very concerned that if you have to do that for all, if you have to rank up to five people for all candidates, that those voices will be lost,” Brown said.
According to McClintock, “exhausted” ballots can be a problem when people don’t rank. If voters only select their top choice, their vote will still be counted, but if their candidate is eliminated, their ballot won’t be redistributed toward another candidate. These ballots are effectively exhausted and won’t count toward the final tally of votes to decide the winner.
McClintock noted that in her research, once voters got familiar with the system and actually ranked, voter satisfaction increased.
“There’s a status quo bias,” McClintock said. “People like what they’re familiar with.”
Brown added that a key argument for ranked-choice voting is that it helps to elect more diverse officials, like Black people and women. But Washington has never had a problem electing Black and female candidates, Brown said, citing the district’s long list of Black mayors and current mayor Bowser, who is a Black woman.
For Brown and her counter-campaign, ranked-choice voting and semi-open primaries are not suitable or necessary for Washington.
What do voters think?
Many have already cast their ballots during early voting in Washington from Oct. 28 to Nov. 3.
Jeremy Jacobs, a registered Democrat from northwest Washington, said he voted for the initiative because it increases democracy.
“I’m very conscious of the fact this is a city where basically the Democratic primary is the election for most votes, and I think welcoming independent voters into that process is truly democratic,” Jacobs said.
Independent voter and Fort Totten resident Stephania Alexander also voted for the initiative and said that it would make her vote count more.
Some voters agreed that the system is not as complicated or confusing as critics claim.
“I listened to a lot of what people were saying from the opposed position, and I felt it was disingenuous, and it sounded like they don’t trust voters to make complicated choices,” Jacobs said. “And I think that’s disrespectful of the electorate.”
