jonetta rose barras: Will the general election be better than the primary?

That is the question political operatives and election watchers are asking as DC begins in-person voting next Tuesday. Many of them seem to be waiting for the other shoe to drop. There remains little confidence in the DC Board of Elections (BOE).

Nevertheless, the District’s voters — most of whom are Democrats — appear to be doing their part. By Oct. 19, they had returned 102,116 ballots, either through the U.S. Postal Service or the 55 drop boxes located throughout the city, according to the DCBOE’s website.

As of Sept. 30, there were 504,043 registered voters in the city across all political parties — with about 1 in 6 of them registered with no party affiliation at all. The voting numbers so far suggest DC could rival the 2016 turnout when 312,575 ballots were recorded. 

The enthusiasm witnessed in the nation’s capital has been reflected in jurisdictions throughout the region. The U.S. Elections Project, which tracks voting, indicated that by Oct. 22 as many as 808.294 ballots had been returned by Maryland voters out of a requested 1,666,733. The Virginia Public Access Project reported that as of Oct 21, a total of 2,113,157 ballots were cast in person or mailed. 

Is anyone else hearing Nina Simone singing “There’s a new day coming. And it’s just around the bend … Coming in peace, coming in joy, coming in love.”

I know it’s not over yet. 

There likely will be more serious fighting and unpleasant conversations — and not just at the national level. In the District, a hot at-large DC Council race has fueled dueling protests, Twitter charges and countercharges, and a sizable amount of campaign literature flooding voters’ mailboxes.

Politics remains a blood sport.  

Election operations are supposed to be less messy, however. Yet there are signals that the District’s Elections Board still may be struggling to achieve that goal — although there has been some improvement over the June primary. 

Is that setting the bar too low?

“I think they have realized this election has to be better than the last. There was no excuse for what happened,” said Kathy Chiron, president of the DC chapter of the League of Women Voters. “So far it appears to be more carefully thought out, and it appears to be running more smoothly.”

That was the sentiment BOE director Alice Miller tried to convey to me during our interview last week. “The phone is ringing off the hook,” she said. The agency is open until 10 p.m. during the week and 3 p.m. on Saturday.

“Residents of DC have stepped up; [we have] so many poll workers we cannot assign them all,” continued Miller. “We’re in a different place than we were in March or April. The city has not shut down and people are on the move.” 

She offered that last week alone she received “900 applications” from individuals interested in working at voting centers. “Our goal was 2,200; we are 1,000 over that number.” 

There are 32 voting sites that will open for early voting, with 95 operational on Election Day. (There were 20 for the disastrous June primary.) Certainly, there will be extra workers at the “Super Vote Centers” like Capital One Arena and Nationals Park. Other facilities will have as many as 12 people. Curbside service will be available (except for the Super Vote Centers), but inside social distancing will be maintained and equipment cleaned after each usage. 

“If people refuse to wear a mask, they will be asked to vote outside, curbside,” said Miller.

About 50 election workers are beginning to process the mail-in ballots that have been received. She said the ballots will go through a counter, but they won’t the tabulation won’t begin until election night.

That may sound as if there has been a massive transformation since the primary debacle. There may indeed have been some tweaks, but politically engaged residents, campaign operatives and government watchers haven’t been impressed.

Dorothy Brizill, founder and director of DC Watch, a government-watchdog group, told me she is “terribly concerned.” She said she has the impression Miller “just wants to get to the morning of Nov. 4.”

“I’m more concerned that we have an honest and truly well-run election,” added Brizill, who ticked off a plethora of issues, including whether poll workers, many of whom are young and inexperienced, have been adequately trained; the condition of vote centers; the potential for lost ballots; and a strange new signature verification process.

It’s interesting that Miller boasted about the huge number of residents who have volunteered. But what is she doing with them, really? 

Joey Schmitt took to Twitter to ask whether any volunteer poll workers had heard from BOE. He has been trained and was told he would have his schedule by now. He hasn’t heard a thing.

CNN’s Jake Tapper is among those who have received ballots. They’re lucky. Thousands of other District voters haven’t. “Who is responsible for correcting the problem? What alternative is BOE offering at this point?” Brizill asked on behalf of voters who see in-person voting as too much of a risk during the pandemic.

Until this past Tuesday, I was one of those without a ballot. I sent Miller an email two weeks ago, indicating I had not received one — although there had been a promise that every registered voter would get a ballot, without having to request it. She checked the agency’s electronic tracker and told me it appeared my ballot had been at the post office since Oct. 1. 

“I’ll check with my post office liaison and find out what’s going on because you’re not the only person with this problem,” she said. A day later, she told me that BOE had my address as a post office box. “Did you check there?” she asked. 

That is my mailing address, but to register you must use a physical address. Finally, she decided she would have another mailed to me. (There was no ballot in the post office box, by the way.)

That worked for me. It’s too late for you. If you didn’t get that precious mail-in ballot by this past Wednesday, Oct. 21, forget about it. That was the deadline. You’ll have to vote in-person, either early or on Nov. 3.

“It’s coming from Washington [state],” Miller told me this week as the reason for the seemingly early cutoff. DC voters may be surprised to learn that their ballots are being printed and shipped from clear across the country.

Hoping for better results than they saw in the primary, the agency contracted with K&H Integrated Printing Solutions, a mail house that many in the country, including the League of Women Voters, have pronounced reputable. Still, 28,000 ballots have been returned by the post office as undeliverable.

“The mail house can only deal with information it is given,” said one election advocate, adding the problem can be traced back to that first mailing BOE distributed over the summer to voters to confirm addresses that appeared in the agency’s database. That didn’t go very well.

“The board knew there were some issues with data. People did not update all their information,” said Miller. “If they didn’t update by close of registration, they probably won’t get a ballot.”

The DC Line’s editor, who updated his BOE registration when he moved within DC last month, did get a mail-in ballot this week at his new address. Even so, doesn’t Miller’s response sound like a version of “let them eat cake”? If you were confused, consider that when I asked if anyone at the agency was reaching out to people whose mail was undeliverable, Miller told me they will address the problem in January.

“We don’t have it down pat yet. The database has to be cleansed,” said Miller, adding that experts in other jurisdictions have told her it “takes 10 years to get it current.”

I’m not buying that.

“At some point you don’t let people stay in jobs 15 and 20 years. You need fresh eyes,” said Brizill, echoing a sentiment shared by at-large DC Council member Elissa Silverman, who has advocated regime change at the BOE.

It isn’t just the handling of ballots that has triggered concerns. It’s also the agency’s apparent unwillingness to release election information, according to Ward 4’s Zach Teutsch. “Given how badly they mangled the last election, there wasn’t a lot of confidence to begin with. Now they are not releasing daily or weekly ballot dispositions,” he said during a recent interview.

“The fact that they are not releasing them publicly looks like they are hoping nobody will notice the problem.”

That has handicapped campaigns that often track voters who are part of their base. Access to the Election Board’s data would make the “Get Out the Vote” effort easier. Without it, campaign volunteers are spending time and money to learn the status of their voters. That task is especially hard this year because of the pandemic, since campaigns are unable to make the familiar last-minute door-to-door visits getting voters to the polls sooner rather than later — a process often referred to as “knock and drag.” 

Even individual voters may be having a difficult time learning what has happened to their ballot after it’s returned to the BOE. Teutsch told me he and his wife marked their  ballots at the same time. He took them to the drop box at the Petworth Library and photographed himself putting them in. Days later, his wife got a confirmation that her ballot was accepted. His was “awaiting review.”  After a phone call, the status changed to “under review.” 

What’s that about? And why has the BOE now decided to check signatures on mail-in ballots? Some people have challenged the agency’s authority to conduct signature verifications. Critics have charged that such a process could lead to hundreds, if not thousands, of ballots being tossed without voters even knowing. Interestingly, it appears that Teutsch’s problem and the signature verification process instituted this year may be related. 

Miller told me that when a ballot is marked “under review” that means that a signature was not found in the system during the “first-line-level review. Then it goes through a second review, which means the staff is looking a little deeper in the system.” If the signature is still not found or doesn’t match what is on the ballot, then the problem is kicked up to a manager. 

“We’re not trying to reject ballots. We are taking the unusual step of contacting voters when there is a problem,” said Miller, adding the steps are precautions against any allegations “not just at this level but any level.”

Despite the explanation — which was also shared this week via Twitter — there still are questions about whether the board has the legal authority to conduct this type of review. Where is Council member Charles Allen when we need him? His Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary has oversight of the BOE. I sent him multiple emails, hoping to speak with him about these problems that seem left over from the primary. But he did not return my requests for comment.

It’s probably too late to fix any of the issues being identified by advocates and campaigns. They don’t appear to be on Miller’s to-do list. She told me the message to voters is this: “If you plan to vote in person, you need to plan to wait; don’t be angry.

“I think we’re going to have lines,” she added, citing what has happened nationwide.

Wait, wait. Since things are messed up in Georgia or Wisconsin or some other state, that means it has to be the same in DC, and voters should accept that as fact? 

Something is seriously wrong with that thinking, if you ask me. 

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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.