jonetta rose barras: An election note to DC officials

There were protests and counterprotests. One candidate was accused of being bought by out-of-town super-rich people. Another was labeled a pawn of big developers. There also were accusations of campaign finance violations. At one point, officers from the DC Metropolitan Police Department had to roll up on one of the voting centers to quiet unbridled enthusiasm of dueling campaign workers. Except for the police dispatch, these 2020 occurrences are consistent with the usual antics of general elections in DC.

Overlaying all of that, however, was the novel coronavirus pandemic. It made this a monster election season. It laid waste to the usual regulations governing how a candidate qualifies for the ballot, trashed traditional retail politics, exacerbated the digital divide, and exposed the operational weaknesses of the DC Board of Elections (BOE). 

“Elections are most successful when they are based upon routine, based on something done before, tried before,” said Dorothy Brizill, who has watched over the BOE and District elections for decades. 

“The thing that struck me was the extent to which the Board of Elections threw in new things when it didn’t have to that contributed to the problems,” Brizill continued, citing as an example new ballot printing machines that jammed at many sites, requiring visits from BOE technicians. “What would have happened if there had been long lines? Why in a presidential election year would they throw in such sophisticated new machinery?

“A lot of people want to think there is some mysticism around voting. There isn’t. You  make a list and include lessons learned.”

Indisputably, 2020 was unique. The last time there was a global pandemic of a comparable scale was 100 years ago. Given that history, we likely won’t see the intersection of such an event and our elections — national or local — for a long time. 

Still, there are takeaways from last week’s election that could help direct the future — some spurred by good results, others not so much.

Check off the reduced number of qualifying signatures required from prospective  candidates as a major faux pas that shouldn’t be repeated — especially for those vying for citywide office, like an at-large seat on the DC Council. Normally candidates for such positions are required by law to secure the valid signatures of at least 2,000 registered voters in order to get on the ballot. There also has been a robust tradition among candidates of challenging each other’s petitions. None of that happened this year for the general election.

Instead the BOE dropped the number of petition signatures to 250 or fewer for independents running against party nominees and in the nonpartisan State Board of Education races. Furthermore, with only a few exceptions, potential candidates didn’t step up to challenge their opponents — contributing to an overly large field in the at-large DC Council race for voters to sort through. 

John Capozzi, a civic leader in Ward 7 who has been politically active in the city for decades, told me that if the board had required the usual number of signatures, “there  probably would have been [only] 10 people in that race.”

“[Instead], candidates knew they would get [enough] signatures and they knew they would get the money,” through the Fair Elections Amendment Act of 2018 that set up publicly funded campaigns.

“They lowered the process for qualifying [for] the ballot to such a level that a dog catcher could become a candidate,” Brizill said, noting that that decision, coupled with the generous campaign finance law, “created a perfect storm for someone to take advantage.”

“I don’t think anybody is going to take a hard look at public financing,” Brizill added.

She may be correct. Certainly there is little interest in examining what role it may have played in pulling 23 people into the at-large contest (24 before one candidate who saw he didn’t have a chance wisely dropped out). Already advocates and at-large Council member-elect Christina Henderson have identified their preferred solution:  a ranked-choice voting or instant runoff law. 

Rather than choose just one candidate, the choice system would allow voters to prioritize multiple selections. Election officials would then announce the winner based on who received the most first- or second-place votes if no one started out with a majority.

In DC’s at-large council races, where voters already are allowed to pick two candidates, ranked choice has less impact. Furthermore, using that system would require even more research from voters given historically large fields whenever open seats arise. 

It may mean a winner would have to be palatable to more people. Still, it’s not a panacea that would address many other complicating factors. Consequently, I think, more consideration has to be given to the qualification of candidates, the size of the pool, and criteria for determining who gets access to taxpayers’ money. 

“I would prefer a runoff system,” said Ambrose I. Lane Jr., a Ward 7 resident who heads one of the largest citizen health advocacy organizations in the city. 

Support for ranked-choice voting may be divided — all but a few elected officials in DC have rebuffed the idea for years — but that no longer seems to be the case with an expansion of mail-in voting. “Let’s do it,” said Capozzi.

“Our voters liked the mail ballots generally and the drop boxes specifically,” said Alice Miller, the BOE’s executive director. As of Nov. 9, 216,810 of the 320,339 ballots the board had received came via those two options.

Election officials mailed a ballot to all 517,890 registered voters for the general election. The global mailing was a change from the primary when voters had to specifically request a mail-in ballot; when the pandemic struck in March, officials said it was too late to make such a change for DC’s June 2 primary. The-ballot-for-everyone approach was supposed to be an improvement over what happened in the spring. 

However, as early in-person voting began, 50,000 ballots already had been returned to the Board of Elections by the U.S. Postal Service as undeliverable. Miller told me earlier this week that she expected to find out more had not been delivered; she could not provide the final number. That’s because the deadline for receipt of all completed ballots is not until Friday, Nov. 13. 

Still Capozzi is aghast by the number of undeliverable ballots. “It’s ridiculous. Let’s take them off the rolls,” he told me during an interview last week.

Ditto, said Lane, who is considering running for office in 2022. “Cleansing of the rolls has to be done on a more regular basis.” He suggested the BOE consider adopting a renewal process like the one in place for driver’s licenses.

Critics worried that retaining the names of people who have either died or moved out of the city could skew actual voting statistics. As of the latest count, the Elections Board has recorded the ballots cast in the Nov. 3 election as 310,945 — or 60.04% — of the District’s 517,890 registered voters. However, if the total number of registered voters is inaccurate, how much higher is the real turnout?

“The data cleanse is something we always do after the general election,” said Miller, who admitted that it’s quite possible that 20% of the names on the rolls are not accurate. She said voters can help with the process of cleansing by returning “response postcards” when they receive them. 

Miller said the canvassing of 2020 registered voters will be conducted in January and February. “We’ll contact every one who did not vote.” 

There also was plenty of criticism about BOE’s ballot-tracking system, and the demand that signatures on returned ballots match those in the agency’s file. Election officials’ communication with the public was severely flawed, as it was during the primary.  

Miller acknowledged in an email to me that the agency has to “tweak the message on the ballot tracker as it relates to the status of ballots once we receive them back.” 

“Our message of ‘received’ and ‘under review’ was not specific enough and voters were confused about the actual disposition of their ballot once it was returned,” she explained. 

Prior to the election, the agency tweeted that “under review” essentially meant the voter signature was being confirmed. Miller told me that at last count 179 ballots had missing signatures. “People didn’t sign them.” There may be more, she said: “We haven’t gone through all of them.” Where signatures are missing, the agency sent emails or other correspondence to voters. They will have until Monday, Nov. 16, to cure the problem; otherwise, their votes won’t be counted.

In some instances, voters were forced to make their way to a voting center when they didn’t receive the mail-in ballot or weren’t sure what happened to it after they sent it back to the board. Fortunately, except for the first day of early voting, there weren’t any long lines — surprising Miller, who had predicted there would be some in an earlier conversation with me. 

Salute the Super Vote Centers, said Lane. “It was a good idea,” he said. Many of DC’s professional athletic facilities — Capital One Arena, Nationals Park and Southeast’s Sports and Entertainment Arena, for example — opened their doors for voting. The University of the District of Columbia and Dock 5 at Union Market were also super polling places with extra staff and voter stations.

Miller said the BOE will “need to discuss how we can continue to conduct voting at the larger venues.”

From my perspective those huge polling sites should be tossed. The concept may have seemed sexy when BOE was mulling over how to serve hundreds of thousands of voters. The results were uneven, however. 

“There is no way in hell there should have been a voting site at [the University of the District of Columbia]. And who decided to have a voting center at the Shoreham in the ballroom?” asked Brizill, who toured many of the super sites along with traditional polling sites during early voting and on Election Day.

Reaching the vote center at UDC meant climbing several flights of stairs and then walking the entire length of the campus. The ballroom at Woodley Park’s Omni Shoreham Hotel may have been a lovely setting, but it too was difficult to reach.

I tagged along and came to the same conclusion. It was difficult to find the exact entrance to several places, including the ones at Nats Park and Dock 5. The layout inside some facilities was ineffective. Furthermore, there was an excess of workers. I got the impression the BOE hadn’t taken the time to project the likely voter turnout at each site, as compared with the typical facilities throughout the city. It seemed they just accepted invitations from all comers without evaluation.

The BOE may also want to toss the specialized senior citizen collection sites it set up for this election. There were as many as 17; however, by Miller’s account, only “327 to 330” ballots were retrieved from those facilities. Some seniors actually went to the polls in vans provided by their centers — in at least one case, because no one had picked up their ballots, according to one of the people who came to vote in person. 

One more lesson learned: Don’t expect anyone to trash the use of the internet for campaigning. It is the retail politics vehicle of the future. “You can reach more people that way,” Lane said. He noted that the combination of traditional in-person political salesmanship and use of tech-based communication would be the ideal.

Candidates may have been caught flat-footed for the primary, but they adapted to the pandemic and public health regime more effectively for the general election. They used Zoom and other visual platforms to enter the homes of potential voters. They deployed Twitter — sometimes strategically — and Facebook.

The virtual potpourri of social media may have disadvantaged senior citizens, those not familiar enough with the technology to engage on a regular basis, and others who simply don’t own the equipment. “Many communities east of the river are digitally challenged,” continued Lane, adding that the reliance on the Internet “impacted how [those voters] participated in the process.”

Lane argued that the Democratic Party should “rectify” the problem by working to train more people in the use of the technology and by making it more available. He placed the onus there because the majority of DC’s registered voters, particularly those east of the river, are Democrats. However, ensuring the enfranchisement of citizens is the responsibility of the government. The BOE and current elected officials have two years to get the job done and level the playing field.

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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.