jonetta rose barras: Paging Emmett Fremaux
After listening last week to DC Board of Elections (BOE) chair Michael Bennett and executive director Alice Miller trying to explain the chaotic mess they made of the June 2 primary, I wondered, Where is Emmett H. Fremaux Jr.? The well-regarded Elections Board director from 1983 to 1996 may be the only person who can successfully ensure a well-run November general election.
Before Fremaux arrived in the District, “elections in DC were a national embarrassment,” recalled Dorothy Brizill, co-director of DC Watch, a government watchdog group that has focused for decades on election issues in the city.
There were ample reasons for ridicule: Ballot cards printed in multiple colors — pink, buff, tangerine — created voter confusion. In 1976, two ballot boxes fell off an open truck. The data on the voter rolls were unreliable.
Faulty equipment, insufficient staffing and inaccurate voter records were all problems that Fremaux encountered, according to his 1984 testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations’ Subcommittee on DC. He identified key elements of the work in which he had been engaged: “restructuring of our agency operations, the revalidation program, the redesign of voter registration, computer processing, and major commitment to poll worker training.”
“We have a lot of building and systematizing work to do,” said Fremaux, who had served as deputy chief election officer for Orleans Parish, Louisiana, prior to coming to DC. Eventually, he cleaned up the District’s voter rolls and instituted a Moter Voter registration system that became a national model.
“Fremaux came in and provided a professional organizational structure. He didn’t fire people; he trained them,” continued Brizill. “He gave us a Board of Elections that we had confidence in.”
That can’t be said for the current crew, however.
Kathy Chiron, president of the League of Women Voters of the District of Columbia, said she is “still a little worried” about the upcoming election, despite the assurance offered in the BOE testimony during Friday’s roundtable convened by the DC Council. “I really hope that our Board of Elections does serious evaluation and is able to take lessons we learned and jump into action, quickly planning for November.”
Truth be told, the BOE, an independent agency, has been sliding for the past decade. It has seen a revolving door of inept leadership. Miller doesn’t even live in DC; she was granted a waiver for the residency requirement.
The problems over the years at the Elections Board have been numerous: voter guides sent out too late, voter guides with the DC flag printed upside-down, voter information cards with the wrong date for the primary, malfunctioning vote-counting machines. Amid all that incompetence, the DC Council has failed to provide rigorous oversight.
Last week wasn’t much different.
The roundtable was convened by Ward 6 Council member Charles Allen, whose Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety has oversight of the BOE. Committee members failed yet again to dig deep into BOE operations and accepted excuses offered by Bennett and Miller, who blamed third-party contractors and claimed the agency is “under-resourced” — despite admitting that they have as much as $6 million of federal and local money that hasn’t been spent and could be used to help upgrade equipment and provide sufficient staff.
Brizill and others were unhappy with how the roundtable proceeded. She blasted it as a typical council hearing where, “in the end, no one is truly held accountable.”
“We are in a countdown for the November general election,” Brizill said. “We don’t have time now for less-than-truthful, self-serving explanations about the June 2 primary election debacle.
“We must prepare and plan for [November]. … It is come-to-Jesus time,” added Brizill.
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the roundtable was Allen’s decision to prohibit council members from asking public witnesses any questions. That only underscored the perception that legislators were unwilling to fully examine the scope of the Elections Board’s incompetence and its effect on voters.
The June primary fiasco had been predicted by many people. Foggy Bottom advisory neighborhood commissioner Patrick Kennedy, who had been a candidate in the Ward 2 council race, anticipated it would be “like a five-alarm” fire.
He was right.
The BOE set up a mail-in ballot request system built around a phone app it knew didn’t work properly; it seems unlikely it will be fixed in time for the general election. Miller admitted 1,100 ballot requests were lost. How many were returned because of incorrect information in the BOE files? That number has not been made available to the public.
To compensate for its missteps in getting an absentee ballot to every voter who requested one, the BOE launched a random election: They randomly selected 300 voters to get theirs by special delivery from the U.S. Postal Service. They randomly selected another 50 voters whose ballots were hand-delivered by BOE staff. They allowed nearly 800 random voters to use the Omniballoting or email system, according to information provided to me by the BOE after I requested more details about what had been done.
The Omniballot process is designed for voters with disabilities. By all indications, many of the people using the email system during the June primary did not cite any disabilities, except that they had not received the mail-in ballots they requested or that the line at their particular poll center was too long, according to emails received by at-large Council member Elissa Silverman. She had encouraged many voters via email or Twitter to request the online ballot, advising them to send her a copy of their correspondence with the BOE.
Silverman told me she sent 500 names of people requesting Omniballots. I asked her to provide me a list of those individuals. She provided me copies of some — though not all — of the correspondence she received and forwarded to the BOE.
The intervention by Silverman was extraordinary. If it had occurred in a foreign country, someone in the United States would be accusing officials there of running an illegal election. No one in DC has filed a complaint. Is it because no one wants to point the finger at a primarily Democratic city, fearing it would provide fodder for Republicans?
“Our greatest challenge to effective planning was time,” the BOE wrote in its recap report.
Say what?!
Bennett and Miller have learned nothing from their June primary mistakes. They now think they have time to implement a mail-in ballot system for November, when experts around the country have cautioned against such an effort. The BOE has said it will mail a ballot to every registered District voter.
“It’s a heavy lift to jump into a vote-by-mail so quickly,” said Chiron with the League of Women Voters. From her personal perspective, she said, it may be “jumping too far, too fast.”
There are nearly 500,000 people registered to vote in DC. The Elections Board couldn’t even manage 92,000 absentee ballots in the June primary.
Bennett and Miller said they will contract with “a private mail house.” That sounds good, except the November ballot is nowhere close to ready because candidates still must submit qualifying petitions; those forms weren’t distributed until last week. Further, the qualifying petitions for individuals who are vying for advisory neighborhood commissions won’t be available for another week.
As for the technology issues, they said they would “identify workable solutions to the app,” upgrade in-house technology, and hire IT staff. They also pledged to “identify experienced poll workers” and open “40 vote centers seven days before Election Day.”
“We will provide additional details around this plan in the coming days,” the BOE wrote in its report and told the council committee.
Am I the only person getting a headache about all of this? November isn’t just some ordinary election. While the District is only one jurisdiction among the many holding elections that day, there is much anticipation around the country. People are eager to restore order and uplift democracy. They are unwilling to jeopardize that and their vote because of a slipshod election process. However, Allen’s overriding advice to the board was to be sure to “reach out” to the council and the mayor if additional assistance is needed.
Oh, forget that. Paging Emmett Fremaux!
jonetta rose barras is an author and freelance journalist, covering national and local issues including politics, childhood trauma, public education, economic development and urban public policies. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.
Thank you Jonetta for sounding a clarion call for all to hear regarding the “true” situation at the DC Board of Elections. As you suggest, the myriad of problems at DC BOE has evolved over the years — where our Board of Elections has gone from being a national, widely acclaimed, model under Emmett Fremeaux to the poorly functioning institution we all witnessed at the June 2nd primary election.
The issue and focus must now be on the District’s preparations for the November 3rd general election. However, not only must the focus be on the DC BOE — both the governing three member board as well as the senior staff — but also on those District officials, from the Mayor to the Council (especially Charles Allen, Chair of the Judiciary Committee) who have consistently failed to properly monitor and provide effective oversight of the DC BOE now and over the years.