Voters in the District of Columbia will use ranked choice voting for the first time this June. Board of Elections Chair Gary Thompson breaks down how it works and what every voter needs to do to make their ballot count.
Hello, my name is Gary Thompson. I am chair of the D.C. Board of Elections.
We’re the independent and neutral agency responsible for administering elections and voter registration here in the District of Columbia. Today, I’m here to explain what ranked choice voting is, why we’ve implemented it in the District, and everything you need to know before you head to the polls on June 16th.
What exactly is ranked choice voting?
Normally when we vote, we vote for one person. So if there are many people in a given contest, like say 10 people, the winner won’t necessarily cross the 50% threshold.
What ranked choice voting is, it allows you to rank the candidates in your order of preference. One, two, three, four, and up to five candidates in a given election contest. If in the initial tabulation, somebody emerges with more than 50%, then they’re the winner.
But if nobody’s crossed the 50-yard line, the bottom-placed person gets cut and their votes get redistributed to those second-place choices, until somebody emerges with greater than 50% of the vote.
Why has the District adopted this now?
Voters proposed a voter initiative, which went through a laborious process here at the Board of Elections. It finally made its way onto the ballot two years ago and District voters approved it by about 73% in all eight wards.
The D.C. Council then chose to fund that proposal and it’s our job at the Board of Elections to implement it, and that’s what we’re in the process of doing right now.
“If I rank multiple candidates, does that mean my vote counts more than once?”
It does not. Whoever you rank as your first choice will always be counted as your choice as long as that person stays on the ballot. In other words, unless they’re eliminated at the bottom of the stack.
But if they’re eliminated, then the program will turn to your second choice and give you that additional participation in how we choose our candidates.
Which contests in D.C. will use ranked choice voting?
Every race on the ballot that has more than two candidates.
So that’s most of the races this time. Obviously, mayor, the at-large races, the race for the delegate to Congress all have multiple candidates in the field. So our voters will have the option, if they so choose — you don’t have to — but they’ll have the option to rank up to five candidates.
What does the actual ballot look like?
Here’s a sample ballot. And for example, it says Mayor of the District of Columbia. And if you’re voting in a party primary, you’re going to see a lot of candidates here, especially in the Democratic primary ballot.
This sample has candidates A through Q. And across the top, it allows you to rank up to five choices.
So let’s say candidate D is your first choice. You just fill in the bubble. Candidate D is your second choice. You fill in that bubble. Candidate B is your third choice. Candidate A is your fourth choice. Candidate G is your fifth choice.
So notice what I did. If you look, I did not repeat a column. I did not repeat a row. So I used all five of my choices and filled out the bubbles, something we’ve all been doing our whole life.
You flip the ballot, do the same on the back side.
And also, if you’re unaffiliated, not voting as a party member, the only race you’ll see on your ballot is the one that says at-large member of the Council of the District of Columbia. That’s a race where there’s going to be multiple candidates. However they’re listed in the order, you have up to five rankings to apply by filling out the bubbles.
Early voting starts on June 8th and it runs through June 14th.
We have 25 early vote centers evenly distributed across all eight wards. You can go to any vote center in the city to vote. You do not have to go to a specific precinct anymore.
So if you’d like to take the time to vote early, please do.
If you want to wait till Election Day, June 16th, that’s perfectly fine.
The polls open at 7 a.m. and they close at 8 p.m. And there’s going to be 75 vote centers open on Election Day. It’ll be pretty hard to miss a vote center. You’ll see a lot of activity in a lot of places. And once again, you can go to any vote center you want, anywhere in the city.
You can take it to any of our drop boxes. You can put it in the U.S. Postal System, or you can drop it off at an election center itself. A lot of people like to just walk into the vote center, especially during early voting, and just drop it off that way. That way they know for sure it’s in our hands.
You can drop off your mailed ballot as late as 8 p.m. on Election Day itself.
Above and beyond anything else, please come out and vote, or vote in the privacy of your home with your mailed ballots.
Take your time, be patient. I found that when I went to fill out a sample ballot, it was very intuitive and very easy. I was not confused. The digital screen is very easy to follow. It’s very easy to understand the grid when you see it in writing if you’re doing a paper ballot. And we’re here to help.
More about the D.C. Board of Elections
Our Board of Elections is an independent and neutral agency. I’m a private citizen. I’m also independent and neutral. What we’re doing here is we are implementing the law as it’s been written and passed.
We did not come up with any of these policies and procedures on our own. The act that passed through the voter initiative and through the council is very specific, down to the details that I’ve talked about in terms of ranking no more than five candidates and so on and so forth. And what we do here at the BOE is simply administer and implement those laws as they’ve been passed.
For more information, visit www.dcboe.org.
