On June 16, voters will see the outcome of an electoral system intended, not only to encourage candidate collaboration, but generate a winner supported by more than half of the electorate.
However, with mail-in ballots already in circulation, at least one longtime District voter questions whether this system, known as ranked-choice voting, will produce the desired results.
“A couple of people marked all the bubbles across on their [candidate’s] name,” Sandra Seegars said. “They had to order a new ballot.”
Seegars, a Ward 8 resident with longtime involvement in local political affairs, counted among those who stood against Initiative 83, an approved ballot measure that paved the way for ranked-choice voting and open primaries.
With the D.C. Council only funding the former during the last budget deliberation cycle, District primaries will remain closed this summer, but with a twist.
In each race, voters can rank their candidates from one to five. If by any chance, no candidate clinches more than 50% of the vote in the first round, the election enters a second round with the fifth-place candidate eliminated.
Those who voted for the fifth-place candidate have their votes transferred to their second choice during the second round of the election. This process continues, with as many rounds needed, until someone secures more than 50% of the vote.
Seegars told The Informer that she will vote the old-fashioned way: one candidate per office. In her case, that means: Kevin B. Chavous for the Democratic at-large council seat, Elissa Silverman for the Independent at-large council seat, Trent Holbrook for D.C. delegate, and Anthony Muhammad as a write-in mayoral candidate.
“Most people don’t understand that some people can vote for one in their first call, and that way you can’t go wrong,” Seegars said. “I would never tell anybody to vote for two or three people. That doesn’t make sense to me. Why would you vote for your candidate and for other people?”
More Community Members Weigh In
Some other people, like Ambrose Lane Jr., predict that a significant number of voters will be left to the wayside this election cycle because of ranked-choice voting.
“It’ll severely depress turnout among super voters that are seniors,” Lane told The Informer.
Lane, a Ward 7 resident and member of Million Man Vote, questioned whether D.C. Board of Elections (DCBOE) had enough time to teach voters about the new voting system. He said that, compared to New York City’s two-year rollout, DCBOE’s efforts over the last six months may not prevent what he describes as the election of someone who’s not of the people.
“It’ll be an injustice,” Lane said, “and we just have to live with that injustice because they’re not going to be able to correct it.”
Lane went even further in suggesting that ranked-choice voting, not executed correctly, could further decimate voter participation in the District, all while raising other issues.
“If a candidate ends up benefiting as a result of votes being thrown out because populations did not really understand, or they weren’t educated enough,” Lane said, “then are they a legitimate mayor, or are they a legitimate at-large council member? That’s the question.”
On June 1, Lane is scheduled to reveal his rankings. Throughout much of the election season, he and other members of Million Man Vote, an organization centered on Black male voter engagement, have interviewed at least a dozen mayoral, congressional and council candidates.
Lane, a health equity organizer of more than two decades, told The Informer that neither of the mayoral frontrunners— Ward 4 D.C. Councilmember Janeese Lewis George (D) and former D.C. Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie— have yet to accept an invitation to meet Million Man Vote.
“We don’t know where they’re going to fall in terms of Black men,” Lane told The Informer.
This election season, Million Man Vote is aiming for the election of two council members who’ve aligned with the Black Man Agenda, the tenets of which include: job security, justice for fathers, free and quality health care, the end of police brutality, and equal access to voting.
With less than a month before the D.C. primaries, and even less time before the release of a report anticipated to show a nine-year life expectancy gap between men east of the Anacostia River and men west of Rock Creek Park, Lane said that the candidate pool, to some degree, leaves much to be desired.
“I don’t hear many Black men being against ranked choice voting,” Lane told The Informer. “The issue is the candidates that we have to choose from. I would say some are not [up to par]. Even some front-runners are not, but there are others that do show promise and hope.”
As the clock winds down to June 16, and council candidates announce ranked-choice voting endorsements, the political landscape is showing signs of what China Dickerson, earlier this year, predicted could come to fruition.
“With ranked choice voting, the person who initially comes in second place, or even third place, ultimately can come in first place,” said Dickerson, communications director for ElectED DC. “The votes trickle down to the person who would have gotten second place, and that person can be lifted up.”
In April, ElectED DC, an east-of-the-river education advocacy group, endorsed the campaigns of: D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson who’s running for re-election unopposed; D.C. Council Democratic at-large candidates Chavous, Greg Jackson, and Lisa Raymond, D.C. Council Independent at-large candidate Jacque Patterson, and D.C. Councilmember Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) who’s also running for re-election.
More than a year after D.C. Councilmember Trayon White’s brief expulsion exposed citywide council representatives’ coverage gaps, Dickerson said the at-large candidates are showing interest in the affairs of Ward 7 and Ward 8 residents.
“All of them said, ‘We need to prioritize the needs of Ward 7 and 8,’” Dickerson told The Informer, “understanding that Ward 7 and 8 currently has the most natives living in the District, and also, unfortunately, it’s the most marginalized of all of the communities in the District.”
The Promise of Getting One’s Voice Heard
Damon Jones said he’s seeing a similar fervor among several of the 2026 candidates.
“They’re actually working harder to get their name out there, which is a good thing,” said Jones, a returning citizen and non-party voter who lives in Ward 1. “They see this ranked-choice voting as an opportunity to show that they are the people’s choice. They’ve been trying to cater to the people a little bit more than just fulfilling the duties of the machine.”
In 2024, Jones joined Make All Votes Count DC shortly after what he described as the disappointment of not being able to vote in the Democratic primary that brought D.C. Councilmember Wendell Felder (D-Ward 7) to office.
Jones pushed for Initiative 83 with the belief that he and other non-party voters should be able to participate in consequential primaries— like those held in a largely Democratic city. More than a year later, with only the ranked-choice voting portion of Initiative 83 funded, Jones called Felder’s nearly 24% victory as indication of what often happens in its absence.
“He would never get in with only 20% of the vote,” Jones said. “It makes a big difference.”
Jones declined to tell The Informer who he plans to vote for in the D.C. Council independent at-large election, the only contest he qualifies to participate in as a voter. He, however, posited the plight of returning citizens as an issue worthy of candidates’ attention.
“I still don’t feel like returning citizens are looked at as a power structure,” Jones said. “I hear candidates say all the right things when I’m posing questions about how they’re going to shift things around so they can create more money for the table, but I don’t have any confidence in any of that for real.”
In recent weeks, Jones has been working to make ranked-choice voting more of a digestible concept through his role as founding executive director of Staying Connected DC Family Services.
“I can understand how confused you would be,” Jones told The Informer. “I try to just stick to the pertinent points, which is showing that previous candidates have won the election with under 20% of the vote. Ranked-choice voting allows more than one choice, in case the first choice doesn’t win. These are mainly some of the reasons that appealed to people.”
East of the Anacostia River, members of ElectED have been knocking on doors and engaging voters in hands-on activities to acclimate them to ranked-choice voting. The nonprofit organization has also launched a civic match app where users can find candidates who align with their values.
In the election, some primary candidates, particularly those in crowded races, have united via cross-endorsements. In the Ward 1 D.C. Council Democratic primary, two out of the five candidates, Rashida Brown and Miguel Deramo Trindade, have endorsed each other, encouraging their supporters to rank their opponent second on their ballot.
In the Independent at-large D.C. Council special election, Patterson and interim D.C. Council member Doni Crawford have formed a coalition against former D.C. Council member Elissa Silverman. A group of Black women have gone a step further, discouraging voters from ranking Silverman on their ballot.
In the Democratic at-large race, U.S. Shadow Representative Dr. Oye Owolewa has endorsed Chavous, Dyana Forester, and Candace Tiana Nelson for the other voters on the downballot. While Jackson and Raymond, in the same race, endorsed Nelson, she, as seen in a statement, didn’t quite return the favor. Meanwhile, as a slew of candidates fight to replace D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, a contingent of voters are discouraging the ranking of D.C. Councilmember Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2).
Amid these developments, Dickerson sees residents living east of the Anacostia River gaining more leverage.
“They understand that there’s actually an opportunity for someone who does not have this sort of machine, tons of money, tons of name ID behind them,” Dickerson told The Informer. “That person actually has an opportunity to win. A true community member, right? Someone who has been on the ground within that community…who will represent them.”
D.C. Board of Elections Gets to Work
Per local law, DCBOE has 10 days after the primary to receive mail-in ballots and fully conduct the tabulation of votes. By July 15, those results will be certified, with DCBOE making the findings of its audit available on its website.
DCBOE Chair Gary Thompson told The Informer that by primary day, the agency would’ve counted already received mail-in ballots, the results of which will be posted shortly after the District’s 75 voting precincts close on the evening of June 16.
“We encourage people to vote by mail so they have that time,” Thompson said. “They can do it slowly and use all their rankings if they want to.”
Thompson acknowledged that, with ranked-choice voting, determining a winner may take more than one night, especially if a candidate doesn’t take more than 50% of the vote in the first round.
“The two guys at the bottom might be one or two votes apart, so we don’t know which one to cut at the bottom and redistribute those votes or might be the other one,” Thompson told The Informer. “It may come down to the wire for us to even know how to start the ranked-choice voting process, and that’s been the case…across the country.”
For much of the year, DCBOE has conducted ranked-choice voting information sessions before advisory neighborhood commissions, and during townhalls, webinars and other public meetings. The agency has also communicated with counterparts in other cities with ranked-choice voting experience, all while training 2,000 election workers who will be dispatched throughout the District during early voting and on Election Day.
Thompson said the goal is to allay confusion about the process.
“Anybody that reaches out to us, our incredible voter outreach team is setting up presentations,” Thompson told The Informer. “A lot of them are by Zoom. Some are in person with voting machines to show them how ranked-choice voting works. So hopefully people get the message and are going be prepared to engage in this new form of voting.”
In Congress Heights, Seegars continues to criticize the agency for what she describes as its lack of attention to detail. She said ranked-choice voting stands to marginalize a significant portion of the District voting population.
“There’s going to be people, especially seniors, who won’t vote because they don’t understand it,” she told The Informer. “They feel intimidated…I don’t think the Board of Elections has done enough, but then if they put themselves out there to educate people, people don’t go out to hear them. So it’s a Catch-22.”
As Seegars and other voters take to social media to demonstrate proper completion of mail-in ballots, Thompson and his colleagues are in the community conducting demonstrations with voting machines, much like what voters will use between June 8, when early voting starts, and June 16.
“There’ll be a little difference between voting by mail and voting in person on the digital machine,” Thompson told The Informer. “If you vote on the digital machine, a lot of errors will be corrected. On your mail ballot, if you rank two people as your number one, we won’t know which one is the real number one. That would invalidate that aspect of the ballot.”
Though Thompson declined to weigh in on how to vote during this election, he laid out the reality available to those who decline to rank candidates.
“If you want to rank just one, that’s OK,” Thompson said. “If your candidate happens to finish at the bottom and gets cut, in that situation, you wouldn’t be participating in further selection.”
