D.C. Finally Moves To Implement Ranked Choice Voting After 3–1 Voter Approval
This week, the Council of the District of Columbia voted to fund ranked choice voting, officially backing a ballot measure that passed in November by a wide margin. This is a welcome change after some D.C. Democrats previously tried to prevent or postpone it from going into effect.
On a traditional ballot, voters pick one from a list of candidates, and whoever gets the most votes wins, even if he doesn’t capture an outright majority. On a ranked choice ballot, voters rank each candidate in order of preference; if no candidate wins a majority of ballots in the first round, then the lowest performer is eliminated, and all his ballots are retallied and assigned to their second choice. This process repeats until one candidate gains a majority.
In November, Initiative 83 was on the ballot in Washington, D.C. The initiative would “allow voters to rank up to five candidates according to their preference in each contest for any office” and “permit any voter who is not registered with a political party to vote in the primary election of that voter’s choosing for all offices.”
Like ranked choice implementation, the second provision was consequential: Since D.C. is such an overwhelmingly Democratic city, winning a Democratic primary essentially means winning the election. But D.C. has closed primaries, effectively disenfranchising the 18 percent of D.C. voters who are registered independents.
Initiative 83 also specified, “This Initiative will not be implemented unless the D.C. Council separately chooses to appropriate funds for the projected costs.”
Ahead of the election, D.C. Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser said she was “totally against ranked choice voting” and would “be vot
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