Why the DC Democratic Party Needs to Listen to Members’ Voices for Ranked Choice Voting
The DC Democratic Party took many Democrats by surprise when it announced — without explanation — that its State Committee refused to endorse Ranked Choice Voting (RCV). But DC Council may ignore the party’s poorly-articulated position, as Democrats push party leaders to reconsider.
The party’s recommendation to reject RCV was in response to the Voter Ownership, Integrity, Choice, and Equity (VOICE) Amendment Act of 2021, introduced by Councilmember Christina Henderson and co-introduced by six of DC’s other 12 councilmembers. The bill would allow voters to rank candidates in order of preference, and if no candidate wins a majority of first choices, an instant runoff would be used until a winner achieves a majority. RCV not only empowers more candidates to compete, it also ensures that a winner always has broad support, instead of just a narrow plurality in a crowded race — like when two at-large DC councilmembers won with only 26% and 14.8% in 2020.
Groups affiliated with the DC Dems quickly condemned party leaders’ rejection of RCV, with the DC College Dems stating in a press release that although “all voting systems are flawed and imperfect representations of preferences… the benefits of RCV would outweigh any flaw the DC Democratic Party may find or manufacture.” DC College Dems explained that “ranking preferences is intuitive and easy — we do it in our everyday lives. And ranked choice voting can encourage more candidates to participate and less acrimonious campaigns.”
Similarly, the DC Latino Caucus announced that it “continues to support Ranked Choice Voting. We believe it increases representation from minorities who have always heard they are voters’ second favorite choice. We’ll work to ensure multilingual RCV education and outreach to ensure voters remain empowered.”
The DC Democratic Party’s announcement on Twitter was ratioed by negative comments and quote tweets that far exceeded the number of likes. Many of the critics were self-identified Democrats, indicating that party leadership was out-of-step with its rank-and-file members. The DC Democratic Party’s Facebook account responded to the backlash by asking “why not wait to learn the details of our decision. You may find it quite progressive.” But when the party chairman finally released his justification nearly two weeks after the vote, it was filled with misinformation.
The party’s recommendation was based on three core concerns, first that “the District faces a substantial challenge with undervoting,” noting that “when District voters are asked to vote for up to two candidates for At-Large Councilmember, consistently more than half choose not to do so.” This demonstrates a misunderstanding of voting methods and voter psychology. The example provided is of approval voting, which incentivizes picking only one candidate even if you’re allowed to vote for more, because voters don’t want to hurt their first choice. In fact, DC voters told Washington City Paper that they used this strategy, known as “bullet voting,” and that they wished they could rank candidates instead.
The party chairman’s press release also cherry-picked data points that contradict more robust studies on minorities’ use of RCV. By singling out NYC’s recent mayoral race as an example where undervoting occurred more often in lower-income areas, the party’s committee ignored the unique context of that race. Specifically, the winner of lower-income areas and the race overall, Eric Adams, discouraged his supporters from ranking other candidates, while his major opponents (Kathryn Garcia, Maya Wiley, and Andrew Yang) were all vocal proponents of RCV. In fact, even after losing, Maya Wiley — who, like Adams, is African American — wrote about how more women and minorities win with RCV. NYC voters are also likely to rank more candidates in future elections after trying RCV for the first time in 2021.
A recent research report by FairVote analyzing elections in San Francisco and other cities in the Bay area, which have used RCV longer, shows that voters of color tend to rank more candidates than White voters, that candidates of color see the strongest gains in districts with a majority of voters of color, and that — unlike with the current plurality system — candidates pay no penalty when they run against opponents of the same race or ethnicity.
The chairman’s second concern was that “district wards are not equal when it comes to voter turnout.” Voter turnout in municipal elections is already a problem that disproportionately affects areas with lower income and education levels in DC and other cities. But if the DC Democratic Party is already so bad at educating voters and motivating them to turn out, then its solution should be to empower more candidates to run instead of simply limiting voter choices.
While using NYC as a misleading example of undervoting, the press release ignored that RCV actually succeeded in increasing overall turnout by removing the spoiler effect so that voters had more choices and more chances for their votes to count. Moreover, RCV increased equity by resulting in winners who will form the most diverse City Council in history — including the first with a majority of women, of whom most are women of color.
The third concern was that “the VOICE Amendment Act’s method for electing candidates in a multi-winner race is confusing,” referring to the proportional ranked choice voting method that’s currently used in Cambridge, Massachusetts and has been used in Australia and Ireland for more than 100 years. The voting experience for proportional RCV is as easy as single-seat RCV, with voters simply ranking candidates in order of preference, while the process for distributing votes is admittedly more complicated. But the benefits of proportional RCV are indisputable because the process effectively minimizes the number of “wasted votes” and makes sure every vote counts to a fuller extent, which would increase the integrity of elections and help restore faith in more accurate representation. Rather than simply dismissing proportional RCV as “confusing,” the DC Democratic Party needs to engage in voter education and acknowledge that RCV is more fair than the current plurality-wins system that undermines voters’ trust and confidence because it feels rigged to maintain one-party rule.
Anyone truly concerned about voter equity and fair representation should read this recent analysis by Sightline about how proportional RCV succeeded in many cities in the 1900s before corrupt party bosses repealed it because it worked too well at leveling the playing field for women, people of color, and other minority groups.
Left out of the party chairman’s rationale was the explanation given to the Washington Blade by some members of the State Committee who “believe a ranked choice voting system would be beneficial to the city’s smaller political party candidates, including Republicans and Statehood Green Party candidates, and would place Democratic Party candidates at a disadvantage.” These party leaders seem to confirm that their true motive for rejecting RCV has less to do with the misleading objections described above, and more to do with the fact that they prefer to control who runs and wins, rather than leaving that up to the voters.
Also left out of the discussion is how RCV could provide a strategic benefit to the DC Democratic Party. With one-party rule, it’s even more important to have a means to solve disputes within the party by identifying areas of consensus, which RCV’s instant runoffs do by sorting through pluralities in order to achieve majority support. This empowers a broader diversity of Democrats to run without worrying about splitting votes with candidates who share ideological or demographic similarities.
With seven of DC Council’s 13 members on record supporting the VOICE Act, RCV may survive party leaders’ attempt to stifle it — but only if we organize to show our support. The Council’s Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety has scheduled a virtual public hearing about the VOICE Act on November 18. Rank the Vote DC is providing a virtual training on October 20 for anyone willing to testify at the hearing. You can also follow Rank the Vote DC on Twitter for updates or visit their linktree for more ways to get involved.
If DC wants to be a state, it needs to convince Congress that statehood is about enfranchising citizens currently being denied fair representation — and not about a partisan power play. That means DC Council needs to affirm that it can govern in a way that is responsive to the voices of the people — and not beholden to corrupt partisan interests.
The mature course of action for the DC Democratic Party would be to listen to its members advocating for RCV and reconsider the VOICE Act based on factual evidence instead of misinformation. While no voting system is perfect enough to satisfy all voters at all times, the DC Democratic Party has a responsibility to accurately compare RCV to the failed plurality system, rather than disingenuously defend the status quo by trying to find minor imperfections with RCV. It’s possible that members of the State Committee simply received bad advice that led them to betray democratic and Democratic values by rejecting RCV. Now they have an opportunity to correct the record by endorsing the VOICE Act to give Democrats and all voters more choice and more voice.
Kyle Herman is a program manager at the National Democratic Institute, a DC-based nonpartisan nonprofit that works to strengthen democratic processes in countries around the world. Kyle writes for Medium in his personal capacity, and his views do not necessarily reflect the views of his employer. Kyle previously served as a writer and analyst in President Obama’s Correspondence Office. In his free time, Kyle co-leads Rank the Vote Ohio, a nonpartisan nonprofit to bring Ranked Choice Voting to his home state. He is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
