Ward 8’s newest council member will enter the John A. Wilson Building later this summer with a bevy of policy and budgetary issues on their plate, including that which concerns a yet-to-be-funded ballot initiative approved by District voters last fall.
As revealed at a recent candidate forum, there’s some agreement that District officials, for the time being, should delay implementation of the ballot measure known as Initiative 83.
For Mike Austin, it’s a matter of understanding its long-term effects and addressing the controversy surrounding the use of white-out on ballot petitions.
“There was some misconception and confusion in how it was agendized and presented to the community, “ Austin, an attorney and former hospital executive, said on the evening of June 2 during a Ward 8 candidate forum at Union Temple Baptist Church in Southeast as he cited a recent article by Jonetta Rose Barras calling for a reform to the ballot initiative process.
“And so I think we really need to make sure we have a deep understanding of what the impact really is,” Austin continued. “I will say that I’m not completely sure right now, but given all the issues of fraud and white-out and the petition challenges and the issues that were there, I think there’s a real issue there.”
Looking Back: BOE and D.C. Council Proceedings More Than a Year in the Making
Last year, on election night, nearly three out of four District voters approved Initiative 83— the two-part ballot measure that, if funded in the Fiscal Year 2026 budget, would implement ranked-choice voting in the District and allow non-party voters to vote in primary elections.
There, however, remains the question of whether the D.C. Council will prioritize Initiative 83’s implementation, especially in the aftermath of an administrative order that D.C. Board of Elections (BOE) issued on April 14. The document shows that BOE adopted its general counsel’s recommendation that four members of Make All Votes Count DC be fined $37,500 for their alteration of 125 voter addresses on ballot petitions submitted to the board last year.
Prior to a BOE hearing where the matter was discussed on April 9, those members — Lisa D.T. Rice, Adam Eidinger, Nikolas Schiller, and Kristen Furnish — entered a stipulated agreement obligating them to: circulate a letter to other petition circulators affirming a violation of District law and complete a BOE staff training on petition circulation before circulating future petitions.
For Initiative 83 opponent Dierdre Brown, this outcome couldn’t have come any later.
“The Board of Elections failed District residents by allowing this to move forward when they knew as early as March of 2024 that there was widespread use of white-out in the petition process,” Brown, a member of Vote No on Initiative 83, told The Informer. “They also knew before this initiative made it to the ballot in November…with two legal challenges challenging the validity of this initiative and they allow[ed] it to go forward. They should [have] never been put before the District voters when these…issues were still pending.”
Last spring, Brown led a cadre of Initiative 83 opponents in an attempt to strike down the petitions via BOE and D.C. Court of Appeals.
BOE would ultimately certify and place Initiative 83 on the November 2024 general election ballot, despite a random sampling and statistical analysis of the signatures conducted by the Office of Planning’s Planning and Data Visualization Division confirming that Ward 5 and Ward 8 voter signatures didn’t meet the 5% threshold.
For Brown, there’s also the question of why BOE stopped at rejecting more than 4,800 signatures connected addresses that petition circulators altered.
“When we said ‘Well why didn’t you throw out the rest, because there’s thousands more,’ they said, ‘Oh, we held the pages up to the light and look[ed] through the white-out to determine voter intent,” Brown recounted.
Last month, Brown testified before the D.C. Council’s Committee on Executive Administration and Labor with the demand that BOE be held accountable for allowing what, according to its administrative order, went “beyond what the D.C. Official Code § 1- 1001.16 and the Board’s guidance permits.”
By the time that D.C. Councilmember Anita Bonds (D-At large) conducted the oversight hearing, the Court of Appeals was on its way to dismissing Brown’s case against BOE. Though Brown would later express disappointment in the court decision, she extolled Bonds, and D.C. Councilmembers Kenyan McDuffie (I-At large) and Matt Frumin (D-Ward 3) for introducing the Petition Administration Clarification Amendment Act of 2025.
“I’m glad that the council member herself, McDuffie and Frumin are taking this serious[ly] and are …trying to put in some safeguards that will stop people in the future [from] not only whiting out but doing any alterations to someone’s signature line,” Brown told The Informer. “When voters write their name, they write their address. We all know if you ever circulated petitions before it, a large number of those are going to be incorrect, but a circulator cannot go back later and correct it.”
If approved, the Petition Administration Clarification Amendment Act would amend the Initiative Referendum and Recall Procedures Act of 1979 to: prohibit alteration of signer information when the signer doesn’t request assistance, and require petition circulators to state, on nomination petition affidavits, that they didn’t alter signer information on a petition after the signer completed it.
Bonds told The Informer that her goal centered on clarifying a process that often confuses voters and pressures them into supporting causes they don’t fully understand.
“If you’re on the street and you’re signing, you’re not taking time,” Bonds said on the morning of June 3. “It’s the concept of the title that is more intriguing to you than reading the language. And it’s very difficult on a petition to explain how it would be implemented or the effects it would have.”
Hours after speaking to The Informer, Bonds and seven other council members approved emergency legislation delaying the tipped minimum wage increase mandated by Initiative 82, another voter-approved ballot measure that’s stoked controversy in recent months. For Bonds, both ballot measures raise the question of whether District residents and elected officials are scrutinizing the implications of significant policy change.
“You don’t want to move forward and not know what it can lead to because there tends to be a domino effect in our government,” Bonds said.
The at-large council member went on to criticize BOE for allowing Initiative 83 on last year’s general election ballot.
“It should have never been on the ballot until the courts had ruled,” she said. “That’s how we usually do business in our government, but they went ahead and now we’re in this dilemma with all these other situations having materialized concerns about our economy.”
BOE Responds, While D.C. Dems Chair Alleges Favoritism
A BOE spokesperson declined to comment on the Petition Administration Clarification Amendment Act.
However, in speaking about BOE’s decision to certify Initiative 83, the spokesperson told The Informer in an e-email that those who challenged the petitions didn’t properly file with BOE, which relieved the court of its duty to expedite the case in time for the 2024 general election.
“The Board would wait until the court matter is resolved when the challenge to the signatures on the petition has been properly filed with the Board and, on appeal, the court has been reminded (by the Board’s motion to expedite) of the need to resolve the matter,” the BOE spokesperson said.
In April, a week after BOE issued its administrative order against members of Make All Votes Count DC, the D.C. Democratic Party, citing questions about Ward 5 and Ward 8 signatures, raised concerns about geographic and racial equity during the petition evaluation process.
Charles E. Wilson, D.C. Democratic Party chairman, would later testify before the D.C. Council’s Committee on Executive Administration in support of increased oversight on ballot initiatives.
“The BOE should always hold the highest standards [when it comes to] transparency, ethics and just making sure that they follow the rules,” Wilson told The Informer. “They owe that to the public because we want to have full faith [that the] process is fair and open.”
During the summer of 2023, Wilson counted among those who attended, and testified at, a BOE hearing where board members mulled over possible violations to the D.C. Home Rule Act and questions of whether Initiative 83 would be subject to appropriations.
As he looked back on that moment, Wilson told The Informer that the cards appeared to be stacked against Initiative 83 opponents.
“I’ve always had the feeling like there were other conversations being held…and it’s opened conversations as to whether BOE was fair in how they ran this process,” Wilson said.
That’s why, despite his support for Petition Administration Clarification Amendment Act, Wilson implored the council to go further in stopping what he describes as the overwhelming influence of outside actors.
“The whole ballot initiative process in the District is broken,” Wilson said. “Too much money from outside of D.C. is influencing our policymaking and our elections. A lot of these people who are gathering the signatures for petitions don’t even live in D.C. They’re just coming in to make money.”
The Debate About Initiative 83 Rages On, and Lisa D.T. Rice Speaks
Ward 8 D.C. Council special election candidates appear divided on the issue of Initiative 83.
While Austin took on somewhat of a moderate position during the candidate forum that WAMU 88.5’s Tom Sherwood moderated at Union Temple, Adofo stood behind the full funding of the ballot initiative.
“I would support it, especially because over 73% of the city wanted to support it, which tells me that over 73% of the city can’t be unaware or not knowledgeable of something,” Adofo said in response to Sherwood’s question on Monday evening. “That’s just way too many people, and if this is the will of the residents of the District of Columbia, then as a legislator who represents them, I would need to be in lockstep with the will of the voters.”
Sheila Bunn took on a position similar to members of the D.C. Democratic Party, including D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, when she questioned the rationale behind combining ranked-choice voting and open primaries in one ballot initiative.
“Had they been separate initiatives, I probably would have a different perspective, but the fact [is] that it was coupled with open primaries,” Bunn said before affirming her party loyalty. “ And I’m a proud, strong Democrat, believing that if you want to vote in a particular primary, you have that choice.”
Despite such sentiments, Rice continues to express her desire for the funding of Initiative 83 in the Fiscal Year 2026 budget, telling The Informer that it’s a matter of respecting the voters’ will.
“We are in a time right now in the District and nationally that very often voters preferences are being ignored,” Rice said. “We’re being told that democracy doesn’t matter, that our votes don’t matter, that what the people want doesn’t matter, that it’s the politicians over the people.”
In speaking about BOE’s administrative decision, Rice said that the use of white-out stemmed from her insistence, and that of other petition circulators, that they honor voter intent. She noted that they were able to do so in consultation with those familiar with the ballot petition process.
That’s why Rice called the white-out use a “very unglamorous technical issue.”
“The timing isn’t lost on any of us,” Rice said. “It’s intended to be a distraction but we are keeping our eyes on the prize here. It’s very, very important that with this mandate from the voters, that we get this funded and implemented.”
Veteran Politico Phil Pannell Weighs In on White-Out Controversy
Phil Pannell, treasurer of “Make All Votes Count DC,” said that the fine levied by BOE has been paid in full.
As it relates to the petition circulator training required of Rice, Eidinger, Schiller, and Furnish, Pannell told The Informer that the stipulation should apply to all future petitioners.
“If the Board of Elections had had that type of orientation in place where they would have held everyone to the letter of the regulations, then none of this would have occurred,” said Pannell, who noted he had no involvement in the voter verification process.
Pannell, a D.C. resident of 50 years, touts his decades of political experience, which includes filing the first-ever ballot petition challenge in the Home Rule Era. He pointed out that petitioners — without issue — changed addresses and apartment numbers, added missing quadrants, and even ensured the names of newly married voters reflected what appeared in BOE records.
“What Initiative 83 validators did was…what most campaigns have done with basically ink pens since the beginning of Home Rule,” Pannell said. “There was no nefarious type of effort made to do anything fraudulently, and no signatures were touched.”
As the Ward 8 D.C. Council special election season intensifies, and Eidinger and Furnish advance a ballot measure that prohibits stadium construction on RFK campus, Pannell said it’s time to move beyond what he called tactics that paint well-meaning, civically engaged people in a bad light.
“The opponents of Initiative 83 are an example of why people don’t like politics,” Pannell told The Informer. “They have just completely just mischaracterized the situation, and it is so disheartening and so discouraging that people can be so mean-spirited as to ascribe these evil intentions to people who were just simply trying to update information.”