Photo Credit: Getty Images / Unsplash

The first victory for election reform Tuesday happened in Washington, DC, where voters overwhelmingly passed Initiative 83 to open primaries to independent voters and implement ranked choice voting.

The proposal is not as substantial of an election overhaul as nonpartisan reforms in 6 states. However, it means more than 73,000 independent voters will have an opportunity to participate in taxpayer-funded primary elections in the future.

Initiative 83 reforms DC elections in two ways:

It moves from a closed partisan primary to a semi-open partisan primary in which party members vote in their respective party's primaries, but independent voters can choose between a Republican and Democratic primary ballot.

It also implements ranked choice voting for all District elections, including the primaries, where large candidate fields have resulted in less than 50% of low-turnout primary voters deciding most elections in the District.

For example, in the 2024 city council primary in Ward 7, Wendell Felder won in a field of 10 candidates with only 24% of the vote. Felder didn't have a general election challenger -- meaning he won outright.

“YES! DC voters have spoken and approved Initiative 83,” said Lisa D.T. Rice, proposer of Initiative 83. “Thank you to every single person who voted YES to let independents vote in primaries and to bring ranked choice voting to my hometown," said Lisa D.T. Rice, who proposed Initiative 83.

Rice is also the advisory neighborhood commissioner for Ward 7.

Rice's group, Make All Votes Count DC, submitted more than 40,000 signatures to put Initiative 83 on the ballot, roughly double the number required by the District for ballot certification.

It did not go unchallenged. In fact, the city's Democratic Party sued to keep voters from having a say in August after the DC Board of Elections said it was okay for the initiative to appear on the ballot. 

This was before Make All Votes Count DC submitted its signatures and a judge ruled that the party's lawsuit was filed prematurely. 

Both major political parties opposed the measure. Democratic Chair Charles Wilson stated that reforming primaries “would undermine the partisan nature of elections and dilute the voices of members of the party.”

DC Republican Committee Chair Patrick Mara said adding RCV and open primaries would be "an embarrassment to the District of Columbia elections.”

Voters clearly disagreed. Party opposition, however, comes as no surprise when the city has long operated under a party-centric election system in which party bosses had an outsized influence over election outcomes.

In fact, the irony is that Mara believes that DC should not experiment with new voting methods until the city has "much cleaner voter rolls and strong, reliable voting systems," because voters will question the fairness of the system.

Voters questioned the fairness of elections prior to Initiative 83, partly because of the partisan structure of a system in which most candidates won before many voters even had a chance to cast a ballot.

And when that chance came around, like in Ward 7, there was no choice for them. 

Initiative 83's success won't change how safe all of the city's wards are for Democrats. It will continue to be a one-party town. But now, independent voters could decide which Democrat ultimately wins.

And because of ranked choice voting, candidates can no longer win outright with only 24% of the primary vote.