jonetta rose barras: Is the gentrification of DC elections underway?

On the surface, ranked choice voting (RCV) may seem like an egalitarian policy. According to advocates, it would ensure that political candidates would be more accountable to voters and more women and people of color would get elected.

Don’t believe that hype. 

In DC, theory often masquerades as practical application or experience. That’s one reason the promise of many public policies goes unrealized.

Consider that advocates of local public election financing claimed that law would level the playing field and increase the candidate pool, making it possible for more people of color to win. In reality, African Americans new to the election process often had a tough time meeting the established funding threshold. That resulted in the arrival of the usual suspects: The folks elected were already political players or were the proteges of the politically connected. 

Still, theorizing has continued unabated. There was plenty served earlier this week by proponents of the Make All Votes Count Act of 2024 — a ballot initiative being proposed by a coalition of organizations and individuals. Representatives from the group and their allies made their initial case this week at a hearing before the DC Board of Elections to get the measure on the ballot for next June’s primary. They asserted that the act is a proper subject for an initiative.

As currently presented, the citizen-generated law would institute by 2026 ranked choice voting for DC’s primary, special and general elections. It also would establish open primaries in the city.

“Under ranked choice voting, voters have the option to rank candidates by preference. After every voter’s first choice vote is counted, the candidate receiving the fewest votes will be eliminated, and each voter’s ballot shall count for the remaining candidate the voter has ranked highest, until one candidate wins with a majority of the vote,” according to the initiative published on the BOE’s website.

Technically speaking, the merits of RCV were not the focal point of the debate on Tuesday — although there are tons of questions about the process and the outcome of elections where it has been implemented. Nevertheless, the current decision before the BOE is to determine whether the Make All Votes Count Act is a proper subject for an initiative. If the board decides the proposal does meet the standards laid out in DC law, proponents will still need to gather enough signatures from registered voters across the city to secure a place on a future ballot.

The three-member body is expected to make its ruling Friday afternoon. That timeline raises some questions about the completeness of the process and whether the board has already made up its mind. BOE Chair Gary Thompson said that residents who haven’t weighed in but want to provide testimony have until noon Friday. So if the board has already announced that it expects to render a decision by Friday at 2 p.m., are the members actually considering all residents’ comments? As I listened to questions asked by Thompson and his remarks during the course of the hearing, he seemed to be leaning toward approval. The other two members — J.C. Boggs and Karyn Greenfield — didn’t ask any questions throughout the entire hearing. Reviewing members’ biographies, it’s hard to discern the basis on which they were selected to help lead the city’s independent elections operation. 

DC law restricts the BOE from approving any measure that violates the U.S. Constitution; authorizes or encourages discrimination prohibited under the Human Rights Act of 1977; violates or seeks to amend the Home Rule Act, which serves as DC’s governing charter; negates or limits an act by the DC Council; or appropriates funds, requiring expenditure of new revenues. 

It seems strange to me that DC law would empower an independent agency to make a determination around whether a proposal does or doesn’t affect public appropriations. The council is the only appropriating branch of government — not even the mayor can make a decision about budgetary issues without council approval.

Unsurprisingly, proponents — dozens of whom appeared at the hearing — have claimed that their proposal doesn’t cross any of those lines. That assertion rests in part on the position taken by DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb in an advisory opinion sent to the BOE. Joe Sandler, an attorney for the initiative’s sponsors, offered that while there is a disagreement between the AG and the DC Council’s General Counsel Nicole Streeter, “the attorney general has the better of the argument.”

Amazingly, Schwalb has theorized that because “the Board is already charged with administering the underlying elections, it is possible that the Proposed Initiative would not impose any additional costs. It is, however, also possible that the Proposed Initiative would impose additional costs.” 

I am suffering vertigo from the circumlocution of DC officials. Is anyone else similarly affected?

Citing a prior court decision, Schwalb concluded that even if the initiative had a “negative fiscal impact … it is nonetheless a proper subject because it ‘condition(s) … compliance’ on Council funding by being subject to appropriations.”

To curry favor with his far-left base, it appears AG Schwalb is willing to perform any manner of legal contortions.

Unfortunately, his maneuver replicates those performed by the DC Council, which routinely passes legislation although no funding is readily available or may ever be available for implementation. The council’s website reveals pages of such laws that languish for lack of funding. Often the public may think the legislature has addressed an issue only to discover it was either deep-sixed or just partially funded.

Streeter, the council’s lawyer, urged the BOE to reject the initiative as not a proper subject for the ballot. Following the AG’s logic, she said, would lead to finding every future initiative “that requires the allocation of additional funds to implement [to] be a proper subject of initiative, rendering the Home Rule Act’s prohibition on initiatives that are ‘laws appropriating funds’ a nullity.”

In other words, the rule would be meaningless. 

I make no claim to being a finance expert. However, it’s hard to fathom how the BOE would establish an entirely new voting system, requiring the need for a new ballot design, new tabulating software and additional personnel to manage all the RCV bells and whistles, without the need for additional funds — funds that have not been appropriated in either 2024 or the city’s financial plan that runs through 2027.

None of that seemed to trouble advocates and advisory neighborhood commissioners who want to lay claim to the new progressive plaything. They pushed for approval of the initiative. Lisa Rice, the chair of the initiative campaign, called RCV “critical to making elected officials accountable.” 

A registered political independent and a Black resident of Ward 7, Rice may have been chosen as the face and voice of the citizen movement as a way to counter the argument that RCV could harm, politically, seniors, African Americans and other people of color. She said such claims are “insulting.”

David Krucoff, a Republican from Ward 3 who has run for office multiple times, said that RCV would force candidates to win over more than just their base and would “provide us with better leaders.”

The Rev. Wendy Hamilton, a Ward 8 ANC commissioner, argued that RCV would “protect the vote and political power, particularly of women and people of color.”

Experiences in at least two states seem to contradict those theories. In the most recent New York City mayoral race, most people predicted that Maya Wiley would become the first Black woman mayor. While she had the second highest number of votes in the initial count, she was eliminated after the first round. Eric Adams won by only one percentage point against Kathryn Garcia, who had been in third place.

RCV was also deployed in the recent Democratic primary election for seats on the Arlington County Board. Officials announced shortly after that they will not use that system for the general elections, citing various problems with tabulation and confusion by voters. “I have heard a lot from voters who belong to minority groups that they really didn’t understand the process,” board member Takis Karantonis told The Washington Post.

Similar concerns came up at Tuesday’s hearing. Robert King, a longtime ANC commissioner in Ward 5 who has worked with seniors citywide, provided statistics about the number of elderly and those with disabilities, who he predicted could find RCV difficult to navigate.

Those arguments and others presented by opponents open the issue of the appropriateness of the initiative beyond the availability of funding on which proponents had focused. 

King and others suggested possible violations of the Human Rights Act. 

David Meadows, a former council staffer and longtime Democratic Party operative in the city, said that the initiative “discriminates against people who speak English as a second language and those with disabilities.”

Another opponent called it “electoral gentrification.” Given current voting patterns in DC, there is reason to believe that RCV would heighten voter participation in communities with already high turnout while marginalizing those with lower turnout based on various unresolved obstacles, including poor ballot design, irregular postal delivery service and inadequate distribution of ballot drop boxes. 

Critics also raised the issue of diluting political power with the potential entry of nearly 90,000 independent voters into the primary elections: Currently, by DC law anyone not registered with a recognized political party cannot vote in the primary.

I’m a registered independent. I have written often about the need for DC to establish open primaries. But that process need not be coupled with the passage of the initiative or RCV. District leaders can introduce a charter amendment that permits nonpartisan elections any time they choose. 

Don’t expect Charles Wilson, chair of the DC Democratic State Committee, to be among those advocating for such a change, however. Speaking at the BOE hearing, he made the case that the initiative runs afoul of the Home Rule Act. He said that while not everyone who is a registered Democrat agrees on all issues, they generally do concur that “Democrats have the right to choose our nominee.”

That message will undoubtedly resonate with the 403,613 District voters who are registered Democrats. That means if the BOE buys into the crazy reasoning of AG Schwalb and rules on Friday that Make All Votes Count is a proper subject for a ballot initiative, the next stage of the movement to bring RCV to the District is sure to be a slugfest. 

Get ready.

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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.