Shawn Griffiths
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The District of Columbia conducted its first ever ranked choice-election on June 16, and according to preliminary analysis from the ranked choice voting advocacy group, FairVote, the results exposed a basic flaw in the way DC traditionally elected people:
Candidates could win powerful offices with most voters choosing someone else.
Prior to the implementation of ranked choice voting, winners could be determined by plurality, which in large candidate fields would result in the leading candidate getting well under 50%—sometimes close to 30% or less.
In other words, it was a system where most voters who participated did not actually get a chance to weigh in on who they preferred among the top candidates.
But FairVote says ranked choice voting did exactly what supporters promised it would do. It allowed voters to support their favorite candidate first without being erased from the final decision when that candidate was eliminated.
The result: tens of thousands more voters remained part of the process in DC’s most crowded Democratic primaries.
The At-Large Race Was (Literally) the Biggest Test
Perhaps the biggest and best example of the impact ranked choice voting had was the Democratic primary for the District’s at-large council seat.
It was a race that drew nine candidates, which meant a majority winner was possible—but not likely. Under the old system, Oye Owolewa’s 34% of first-choice votes would have been enough to win the party nomination outright.
That is how DC politics worked for years. A crowded field split the vote, a candidate grabbed a plurality, and the rest of the electorate got told that 34% was a mandate when two-thirds of voters chose someone else as their top pick.
This is how the current seat holder, Anita Bonds, won her position in 2022. In fact, the results were nearly identical. Bonds took 36% of the vote.
Ranked choice voting, which was part of the voter-approved Initiative 83 that Bonds and other Democratic city leaders opposed and even sued to block, changed that.
After 8 rounds of ranked-choice tabulation, FairVote reports that Owolewa’s preliminary support rose to 51%. Roughly 30,000 additional voters had their ballots count for one of the three finalists after their initial favorite was eliminated.
The analysis found that 89% of voters in the at-large contest expressed a preference among the three finalists. Among voters whose first choice did not make the final three, 71% had ranked at least one finalist somewhere else on their ballot.
Put another way, most voters got a say in the final outcome between the top performing candidates. The old system simply would have ignored them.
“[Owolewa] will be heavily favored to win the general election – and if he does, he will enter office with majority support and a clear mandate to lead,” FairVote’s Deb Otis, Avery Hyde, Matthew Oberstaedt write.
DC is a one-party town. Democrats control all executive offices and every city council seat that the rules allow them to hold. Republican registration is in the single digits, while 1-in-5 voters are registered independent.
This illustrates how important primary elections are, and even though DC voters approved semi-open primaries along with ranked choice voting under Initiative 83 with 73% of the vote, the DC Council refused to open primaries to independent voters in 2026.
FairVote notes that DC had—up until reform— repeatedly elected candidates in Democratic primaries with less than 50% of the vote. This means a relatively small slice of voters effectively decided who governs.
The old system did not require candidates like Owolewa and Bonds to build support beyond their base. It required only that they finish ahead of everyone else in a fragmented field.
The point of ranked choice voting, according to advocates, is it creates a different incentive. Candidates who want to win crowded races now have reason to appeal not only to their core supporters, but also to voters who may rank someone else first and them second or third.
Ward 1 Shows the Same Pattern
The Ward 1 Democratic Council primary produced a similar result.
Aparna Raj led the first-choice count with 47% (closer to a majority, but still short of it), while Miguel Trindade Deramo had 21%. This triggered a ranked-choice tabulation and after 4 rounds, Raj reached 52% and won the nomination.
FairVote found that 96% of Ward 1 voters expressed a preference among the three finalists. Of voters whose first choice was eliminated, 71% had also ranked at least one of those finalists.
DC Voters Did Not Break the Ballot
Critics of ranked choice voting often predict confusion, spoiled ballots, and a public unable to navigate a ballot that asks them to simply rank candidates like they would rank their favorite movies.
The data shows DC’s first ranked-choice election does not support that argument.
FairVote reports that 99.6% of ballots cast in the Democratic mayoral primary were valid, indicating that voters did not just understand their ballot, they had no problem filling it out.
The mayoral race did not even require a ranked-choice tabulation because Janeese Lewis George won a majority of first-choice votes.
FairVote emphasizes this point to note that ranked choice voting does not manufacture extra rounds where they are not necessary. When a candidate wins majority support immediately, the race is over.
The system only kicks into its fuller function when voters are divided across large candidate fields—like in the at-large council race and Ward 1—and no one has a majority. In both cases, the preliminary results show that voters used their rankings.
Again, this refutes the claim that ranked choice voting is confusing to voters.
The Person Who Put Ranked Choice Voting on the Ballot Says There Is Still Work to Be Done
The DC Board of Elections is still processing eligible late-arriving mail ballots, so the numbers remain preliminary and may change before certification. But the data suggests the first ranked-choice election did not break democracy, as critics warned.
In the two races that went to ranked-choice tabulation, FairVote found that 90% of voters expressed a preference among the three finalists. And in both races, 71% of voters whose first choice was eliminated still had a ballot that counted for one of the finalists.
Grow Democracy DC CEO and Initiative 83 proposer Lisa D.T. Rice notes on IVN that reform work is not finished. She points out that the DC Council still has an obligation to fund open primaries, which roughly three-quarters of voters approved in 2024.
“These are taxpayer-funded elections. Every voter should be able to cast a ballot. It is time to fund implementation of semi-open primaries,” she writes.
The DC Council will decode the FY2027 budget on June 23. The question is, will councilmembers fully honor the will of voters—and the democratic process?