The YES on 83 campaign announced Friday that the Board of Elections approved Initiative 83 for the November ballot. The initiative would establish ranked-choice voting for DC elections, and allow voters not registered with a political party to vote in primaries.
The campaign gathered over 40,000 signatures in support of the initiative during the first half of the year, which the board certified as valid Friday morning.
In a press release, the campaign said it is now up to DC voters to approve the policy on Election Day. Lisa D.T. Rice, who proposed I-83, told Washingtonian in July that she believes ranked-choice voting will force elected officials to be more accountable to their constituents.
Ranked-choice voting works by electing whoever gets 50 percent of the vote after voters rank their preferred candidates.
The other part of I-83 is a provision that would open up local primaries to independently registered voters, who number about 75,000 in DC. Voters already registered in one party would not be allowed to vote in the another party’s primary.
In a city dominated by Democrats, primary winners don’t usually have competitive seats in general elections. Rice, who is an independent, points out that taxpayers fund primary elections, and thus, all should be able to participate if they choose. “Is there any other fundamental right that we Americans enjoy that we have to join a private organization in order to be able to exercise that right?” she said in July.
Others have expressed skepticism about I-83. Mayor Muriel Bowser wouldn’t add her signature, according to the Washington Post, and longtime local politico Chuck Thies previously told Washingtonian that he disagreed with ranked-choice voting.
“You don’t accomplish confidence-building in election results by telling [voters] to pick three people and then some algorithm, some voodoo math, something that you probably don’t understand because most people don’t like math, is going to determine who won,” he said.
Correction: A previous version of this story stated incorrectly that Mayor Bowser would not sign Initiative 83 if it passed on Election Day. It has been corrected to reflect that Bowser declined to put her signature on the petitions to get the initiative on the ballot.
