Voters in the District’s June 16 primary and D.C. Council special election will have more ways to fill in their ballots, as they’ll be taking part in ranked choice voting for the first time.
Instead of choosing a single candidate in any given race, voters will have the chance to rank up to five of their favorites on the ballot.
Voters brought about the change in 2024, when they approved Initiative 83 by an overwhelming margin.
To help voters in this year’s primary, D.C.’s Board of Elections launched a public service campaign, with , and staff and volunteers fanning out across the District to help educate voters.
“Younger voters tend to be a bit more receptive to [ranked choice voting] than older voters,” said Yewoinhareg Kebede, a public affairs specialist with the D.C. Board of Elections, during a recent voter outreach event at the University of the District of Columbia.
The younger voters also tend to question the value of their votes and have “checked out, given what’s going on in the country,” Kebede told ²ÝÝ®´«Ã½. However, “the older generation is adamant about ensuring that they vote.”
Monica Gaskin, a seventh generation Washingtonian, has never missed an election.
As she stopped by the BOE tables, Gaskin told ²ÝÝ®´«Ã½ that her grandmother always encouraged her to vote since she was first eligible in 1988.
“I’ve voted in every election,” she said. “I’ve never not voted.”
Gaskin also said she looks forward to trying ranked choice voting.
Jeremy Mayer, professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, said it’s true that older residents tend to be more reliable voters. But, he said, there may be some resistance to adapting to the mechanics of the ranked choice system, with its rows of races and multiple columns of candidates in a single race.
“There’s always the inherent conservatism of the elderly,” he said.
As for younger voters, “I don’t think young people are particularly drawn to [ranked choice voting], but they are drawn to anything that would make our politics less toxic, less Trumpy,” Mayer said.
“The young people in my classes, they are so disgusted with American politics, with how ugly it is, and so they’re willing to try a lot of new things to fix it.”
Time is a major ranked choice voting deterrent
Mayer said ranked choice voting has its own issues, with one of the most commonly cited being the amount of time it takes.
That’s because voters can choose more than one candidate for a race, and must rank them by order of preference.
“The amount of time it would take each voter to vote, and the amount of research they would have to do to cast an educated ballot would go up,” Mayer said, adding that the extra work needed to be done before heading into the voting booth could be a deterrent for some.
“What we know about voters is they don’t like — none of us likes — to feel stupid.”
While choosing between two candidates is simple, Mayer said an increased lineup of candidates can start to complicate things.
“If now you give me a ballot with five options and I have to rank order, not just the Republican and the Democrat, but the Libertarian and the Green, a lot of people will say, ‘Hey, voting’s too complicated. I’m out,'” he said.
But for voters tired of the current bare-knuckled politics, Mayer said there could be a benefit that might bring more voters back to the voting booth: a moderating of the campaigns.
“If you say terrible things about the other candidates, their supporters are unlikely to put you as their second choice,” he said.
Mayer said for voters who would like to cast their ballot for a third-party candidate, ranked choice voting offers another benefit.
“Let’s say I was a moderate Republican, and I’m really a Libertarian,” in those cases, Mayer said, a voter isn’t likely to select their preferred candidate, out of fear that the Democrat could win.
“If you give me ranked choice voting, I might put the Libertarian first and the Republican second, so that my vote for the Libertarian will register,” and that vote won’t hurt the chances of the Republican.
Getting out the youth vote
Asked whether his students have tuned out politics and abandoned voting, Mayer said very few have given up on voting.
“But then I teach people who tend to major in political science, so they’re already identifying as political nerds before they cross the threshold of my classroom,” he said.
In the District, where Kebede said many young voters have “checked out,” she has done a lot of voter outreach on college campuses, at libraries and at high schools.
“When I go into the high school classrooms,” she said, “I always start that presentation and that session just asking them what their favorite things about D.C. are, and what are some things that they wish that they could change.”
Kebede said that helps demonstrate how their vote could have a direct effect on how their local government serves them.
Gaskin’s message to young voters echoes what she said her grandmother told her.
“If it were not important, they would not be trying to suppress our vote,” Gaskin said. “I’m going to vote in every election for as long as I can, as long as I have the right to.”
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