“Honoring the will of the voters means protecting voter access, voter understanding, and voter confidence — especially for communities that have historically been disenfranchised in our election systems,” Ward 7 DC Councilmember Wendell Felder said last week during a roundtable convened by the Committee on Executive Administration and Labor. The intense three-hour discussion was convened to focus on the Board of Elections’ general preparations for the upcoming 2026 primary and general elections.
However, most of the comments and questions dealt with implementation of ranked choice voting. A citizen initiative approved overwhelmingly during the 2024 general election called for DC to adopt semi-open primaries and RCV, which allows voters to choose multiple candidates for each office on the ballot and to prioritize those choices. Heretofore, the at-large council race in the general election has been the only contest where voters have been able to select more than one candidate; the totals each contestant received provided the ranking, with the top two prevailing.
Felder’s statement seemed an attempt to contextualize comments made by his colleagues and others about the legislature’s obligation to follow the will of DC voters. Except, by its actions, the council effectively nullified half of voter-approved Initiative 83 when it chose to add funding only for the portion that established RCV, leaving the components involving semi-open primaries without financing or an implementation plan.
“How do you fully implement something that was partially funded?” Felder asked during a telephone interview with me earlier this week.
Moreover, based on the prepared testimony and answers to questions provided by Elections Board Executive Director Monica Evans, even that partial implementation comes with serious and indisputable challenges: For instance, a new ballot must be designed, which hasn’t yet happened. Its length may grow from the current 14 inches to 17 inches or possibly 19 inches. It’s also unclear how many pages it will contain since the number of candidates won’t be known until February.
“That will incur additional cost. Postage costs have gone up,” Evans told councilmembers last week.
A new management and staffing system may be required as Evans has predicted there could be long lines at vote centers. There are also issues related to tabulation, certification and the mandated audit.
I was flummoxed to learn during the hearing that the Elections Board has not even begun to write the rules and regulations required to hold any primary using RCV, according to its general counsel, Terri Stroud. “We don’t want to do piecemeal rulemaking,” she told the council, adding that the agency has been “working with other jurisdictions” to learn about practices and procedures in use elsewhere.
After hearing those and other revelations, Felder said, “I do not feel confident that the DC BOE is ready for a responsible and successful implementation of RCV in June 2026.”
Ward 5 Councilmember Zachary Parker was also troubled by the testimony during the roundtable. “We have a problem, and we should be thinking about how we are going to help the Board of Elections,” he said this week during a council breakfast held a few hours before its legislative session on Tuesday.
“I am very concerned,” offered at-large Councilmember Anita Bonds, chair of the committee that convened the roundtable. “If I had to gamble on this, I wouldn’t do it yet. We would have to do so much outreach, and it hasn’t [even] been planned.”
