Martin Austermuhle / DCist/WAMU
Officials and activists associated with the D.C. Democratic Party on Tuesday expressed their opposition to a proposal for ranked choice voting and open primaries to be adopted for the city’s elections, arguing that a proposed ballot initiative would violate the law and discriminate against seniors.
The debate took place during a four-hour meeting of the D.C. Board of Elections, which is tasked with deciding whether the proposal — which was first unveiled in May by the Make All Votes Count D.C. campaign — is eligible to be placed on the ballot for next year’s election.
The proposed initiative would create a system of partially open primaries under which independent voters would be able to cast ballots in the partisan primary of their choice. (In D.C., primaries are held for Democratic, Republican, and Statehood Green candidates for office.) Currently, independent voters — roughly 85,000 of them, or 16% of the city’s electorate — are only allowed to vote in general elections, by which point many races have been largely decided because of the overwhelming number of Democratic voters who can cast ballots in their primary election. States like Arizona, Colorado, Massachusetts, and West Virginia currently have semi-open primaries.
More notably, the initiative would introduce ranked choice voting starting in 2026. Under that system, voters can rank candidates in order of preference; if no one candidate wins an outright majority, the...
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