As the summer winds down, proponents of the “Ranked Choice Voting and Open the Primary Elections to Independent Voters Act of 2024,” otherwise known as Initiative 83, are setting their sights on District voters who live in Ward 8.
Candice Nolde, an advisor to the “Yes on 83” campaign, told The Informer that organizers plan to hit every festival in the coming months, and erect signage and circulate mailers to further drive home the point to Ward 8 voters that ranked-choice voting and open primaries can change the tide in electoral politics.
“It’s about being present on the ground,” Nolde said. “The approval of Initiative 83 would mean that a significant number of disenfranchised people would be able to participate. It’s about building consensus around a candidate, making sure there’s buy-in for who’s elected and getting good policies in place for Ward 8 and the District at large.”
Initiative 83 to Appear on November General Election Ballot
On July 1, “Yes on 83” campaign members submitted more than 40,000 signatures in support of Initiative 83. After an arduous, and often contentious, 30-day approval process, the D.C. Board of Elections (DCBOE) certified the petitions.
That means Initiative 83 will appear on the November general election ballot. But not without some questions about the support, or lack thereof, for ranked-choice voting and open primaries among Ward 8 residents.
Out of the more than 40,000 signatures submitted, DCBOE rejected 4,802 lines that had been whitened out and 1,600 lines that had no voter information. Another 1,114 lines had been crossed out by the proposer or removed by DCBOE.
That left 35,124 signatures — an amount that significantly exceeded the 5% minimum.
During a random sampling and statistical analysis of the signatures conducted by the Office of Planning’s Planning and Data Visualization Division, it was confirmed that petition circulators met the 5% minimum requirement for verified registrants citywide, and in six out of eight wards (Wards 1,2,3,4,6, and 7).
The samples from Ward 8 didn’t meet the 5% threshold, according to the agency’s statistical analysis. The Planning and Data Visualization Division also made no decision on Ward 5 based on inconclusive statistical findings.
DCBOE kicked off its Aug. 2 public meeting with board members providing an overview of how it, in conjunction with the Planning and Data Visualization Division, reached its conclusion.
The process, which involved 40 DCBOE staff members, started with the verification of petition circulators’ residency or proper DCBOE registration. Staff members also had to determine whether, based on name and address, each petition signer was a registered D.C. voter. Staff members then tallied the total number of verified signatures to determine whether petition circulators had the sufficient number of registered voters — at least 5% of the citywide and ward-level population — to move on to the signature verification stage.
During signature verification, staff members at the Office of Planning’s Planning and Data Visualization Division drew a random sample of signatures to see if they matched the original signature in DCBOE records. They used the validity of the sample to make a determination of whether the total batch of signatures meets or exceeds the required confidence level of 95%.
In his remarks, DCBOE Chairman Gary Thompson thanked all involved parties for facilitating the approval process. He then turned to Initiative 83 supporters and opponents, asking that they each make their case to District voters.
“Our voters have a long way to go before November to hear both sides,” Thompson said. “Instead of putting your energy on us — the ones who count and verify the signatures — the most productive use of anyone’s time is to help educate our voters on both sides of the issue,” he continued. “Let the chips fall as they may and let the voters decide how they want to vote. I hope that’s the next phase of this journey.”
Some Contention around the Validity of DCBOE’s Approval Process
Nolde said she trusted DCBOE’s findings, including the portion concerning Ward 8.
“We have absolute confidence in what they put forward,” Nolde told The Informer. “We had a great amount of interest in Ward 8 and expect that to continue. There are a lot of people who are excited about the prospect of having a say in the decisive elections in D.C. We received messages about how to get involved. People are saying this is the change they can get excited about.”
Meanwhile, Initiative 83 opponent Deirdre Brown said that the count she and her colleagues conducted during the 10-day challenge period found that Initiative 83 petition circulators didn’t meet the minimum signature requirements in at least four wards — Wards 2, 5, 7 and 8.
As Brown and other members of “Vote No on Initiative 83” gear up for a voter education campaign, Brown continues to maintain that DCBOE’s signature verification process lacked transparency and standardization. Throughout the overall petition certification process, and even on the day of the DCBOE hearing, she repeatedly questioned how DCBOE staffers opted not to reject petition pages that had at least one signature line altered with whiteout.
For Brown, eliminating altered signatures by lines, and not by pages, compromised the integrity of the petition certification process.
“If you had removed those pages, the petitions wouldn’t have been certified,” Brown told The Informer. “DCBOE also left some signatures with whiteout. How did they determine which ones to leave out and which ones to keep in?”
Brown said she hasn’t received an answer from DCBOE to this day.
In reflecting on her experience as an observer, Brown said that DCBOE restricted some of her movement, relegating her to a folding chair behind staffers, all of whom were spread out in cubicles across the 6th and 7th floor of 1015 Half Street SE. Her movement and that of other observers to each of those cubicles required an escort, Brown told The Informer.
As Brown recounted, DCBOE relied on staffers, many of whom she said seemed confused about their role, to use their discretion when approving and rejecting signatures. That’s why, on Aug. 2, she demanded that the D.C. Council and Executive Office of the Mayor solidify policy around the use of whiteout to make corrections on petition pages.
While she’s revealed no plans to appeal DCBOE’s decision, Brown said she maintains her position that DCBOE’s lack of clarity around whiteout allowed for the agency to arbitrarily decide which whitened out signatures to keep and which ones to reject.
Brown said every rejected signature went to a quality control department, the head of which she said she unsuccessfully attempted to identify.
“Questions still remain about how decisions were made, who made the decisions about which signatures to include and which signatures with whiteout would be excluded,” Brown said. “Who held the 8,000 pages to the light? Were all of them held to the light? I’ve been asking since July 3, and I’ve been having this fight ever since.”
Per D.C. law, petition signatures are excluded from random sampling if: the signer was inactive on the voter roll at the time they signed the petition; if the signer isn’t registered to vote at the address listed on the petition; the signature is a duplicate of a valid signature; the signature isn’t dated; the petition doesn’t include the printed or typed name of the signer where the signature is not sufficiently legible; or the circulator wasn’t qualified at the time the petition was signed or they failed to complete the required information on the circulator affidavit.
DCBOE told The Informer that staff members reported questions about accepting and rejecting signatures to the registrar or assistant registrar. Staff members, they said, excluded signatures where addresses were whited out and covered with new addresses. DCBOE also said they excluded entire sheets where the address on the circulator affidavit was covered and replaced with another address.
When it came to the use of whiteout on petitions, Nolde emphasized that YES on Initiative 83 campaigners, to her knowledge, didn’t alter signatures nor addresses.
Their only goal, she said, was to make addresses on the petitions more legible.
“The limited use of whiteout was to make it easier on the DCBOE and find voters in the database. There’s a lot of bad handwriting out there. We were just trying to make it crystal clear.”
The Ward 8 Democrats Push Back against Initiative 83
D.C. Councilmember Trayon White (D-Ward 8) won re-election during the June 4 primary with 51.48% of the vote and fewer than 20% of registered Ward 8 Democrats cast their ballot.
That outcome, along with Wendell Felder’s electoral victory in neighboring Ward 7 with less than 30% voters participating, has inspired questions among people about how to encourage more District residents to make their way to the ballot box.
Troy Donté Prestwood, president of the Ward 8 Democrats, said that ranked-choice voting and open primaries will make no difference in boosting voter turnout. He expressed his belief that such changes would instead threaten the integrity of the electoral process.
“It opens the party to non-Democratic voters. It’s a poison pill for a lot of us,” Prestwood told The Informer. “We’re putting money behind more voter education in Ward 8 to encourage our voters to vote down Initiative 83.”
Prestwood noted instances in the past when, during community discussions hosted by the Ward 8 Democrats, residents who learned about Initiative 83 expressed apprehension about what it entailed. He went on to note that Initiative 83 garnered support due to who he described as out-of-towners who propelled the campaign.
In the months leading up to the general election, Democratic Party leaders in Ward 8 plan to continue to encourage voters to support Democratic candidates running for ward-level, citywide, and national offices.
Even with those efforts, Prestwood posits that the onus rests with candidates to wake up voters.
“We can do all the education we want, but candidates have to motivate people,” Prestwood said. “It’s also a voter’s right to stay home [as] a protest vote. It’s our job and the job of candidates to tell voters that they can’t sit it out. We need their voice. That’s how we get the change we need. We’ll continue to tell that story.”