Leaders are debating whether to adopt an electoral system in the District that has become increasingly popular in other cities: ranked-choice voting.
Proponents of ranked-choice voting — which allows voters to select multiple candidates and to indicate the order of their preferences — have successfully changed the method of voting in some jurisdictions across the country. In one of the most prominent tests of ranked-choice voting, New York City voters recently used the process for the first time to elect their new mayor and city council members.
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But when a D.C. legislator introduced a bill this year that would switch the District to a ranked-choice system, the city’s Democratic Party took a fierce stand against it.
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On Thursday at a hearing on the bill, a stream of party activists lined up to testify against it, calling the proposal confusing and undemocratic. A competing pool of witnesses embraced the idea, saying that it would lead to officeholders who are supported by more of the electorate and would help women and minorities win elections.
How ranked-choice voting could change the way democracy works
Some say that the District’s at-large council races are a clear example of the sort of election that would be improved by ranked-choice voting. The field for these races is sometimes not winnowed down by a primary, since the city reserves two spots on its council for people who are not members of the majority party, generally independents. That, combined with the city’s relatively new public financing program that makes it more financially feasible for people to run for office, can leave voters with a huge list of choices from which they can only select two, under the current system.
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Last year, Christina Henderson (I) won one of those seats on the council with just 14 percent of the votes cast. Now she is leading the charge to change the system, introducing the ranked-choice-voting bill that advocates say would make these elections more representative of the true will of the majority.
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“One of the principles of democracy is that those who govern have the consent of the majority of the governed. The winner should have the approval of the majority of voters,” said Joslyn Williams, a former head of the D.C. Democratic State Committee who supports the bill. “It is clear to me that we need to change the system. … This is not what democracy should look like.”
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How ranked-choice voting works, typically: When all the first-choice votes are tallied, if no candidate has a majority, then the candidate with the fewest votes is dropped from the contest. Tabulators then revisit all the ballots that went to that last-place candidate and redistribute their votes to the candidates listed as second choice on those voter’s ballots.
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That keeps going, dropping the lowest-ranking candidate each time, until one candidate has enough votes to win the election.
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Advocates say ranked-choice voting would help some voters feel comfortable taking a chance on a candidate who is truly their favorite, unafraid of “wasting” their vote on a candidate they worry is unlikely to win — which would perhaps benefit untraditional candidates with smaller budgets. Some presented evidence from cities that have used ranked-choice voting including Minneapolis, Santa Fe, N.M., and Oakland, Calif., to suggest that women and candidates of color benefit from the system.
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But a stream of members of the D.C. Democratic State Committee testified Thursday against the bill, saying that ranked-choice voting would be confusing to residents, especially elderly, disabled or immigrant voters.
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“Ranked-choice voting turns checkers into chess and would upend our traditional democracy in favor of a system few understand and none can explain,” said Robert King, a party activist in Ward 5. “It would lead to the greatest voter suppression and marginalization of our seniors since the Voting Rights Act of 1965.”
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Many of the party leaders pointed out that voters in Wards 7 and 8, the poorest and most heavily African American wards in the city, are already more likely to select just one candidate in races where they are allowed to vote for two, indicating that they may not understand how to fully exercise their vote.
“If voters in certain parts of the District consistently do not rank more than one candidate, their concerns are less likely to be heard,” D.C. Democratic Party Chair Charles Wilson said. “Ranked-choice voting would further tilt the electoral influence to more affluent parts of the District.”
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Ward 6 party leader Matt LaFortune, who pointed out that lower-income New York City voters were less likely to vote for multiple choices in their recent election, added: “Ranked-choice voting is not equitable. It casts aside our one-person, one-vote system. … Those that select only [one candidate] are at risk of having their votes thrown out in the later rounds.”
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Several acknowledged that selecting one candidate in a pick-two race is not unique to low-income minority voters: The same “under voting” is common in Ward 2, which is one of D.C.'s wealthiest and is majority-White.
And some found the charge that minority or elderly voters would be confused offensive. “Stating that Black people don’t understand how to rank their choices or how ranked-choice voting will work? This is unbelievable and very insulting to our community,” said Kelsye Adams, a proponent of the bill.
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The legislation was introduced with the sponsorship of seven of the council’s 13 members. If it eventually wins a majority vote of the council, it would take effect in 2024, not in the upcoming 2022 election.
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If it had been on the table for next year’s primary, one witness noted Thursday, it may well have changed the calculus in Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s (D) reelection fight, making it less likely that left-leaning voters opposed to the mayor would split their votes between challengers Robert C. White Jr. (D-At Large) and Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8).
White and White, who are current council members, both chose not to sponsor the ranked-choice voting bill.