Results for D.C.’s first ranked-choice election could take days

Election night parties might not be the same this year in D.C., in part because candidates may not know whether they’ve won their races until days later.

D.C. election officials have started to temper expectations for the city’s first foray into ranked-choice voting, warning that results in many races may remain up in the air for at least five days after the June 16 primary.

“When you get 20,000 to 40,000 [mail] ballots on Election Day, it is not possible to process those on election night,” said Monica Evans, the executive director of the D.C. Board of Elections, at a recent press briefing. “That really shifted when we started using mail ballots, because once you return a ballot that is properly postmarked by Election Day, we have 10 days to receive and count that ballot.”

The potential delays in reporting results for the hotly contested and highly consequential primary could draw unwanted attention from Republicans in Congress and the White House, which have significant power over D.C. and have been critical in the past of how the city manages its elections.

Those delays are linked to two factors, election officials say: how ranked-choice voting works, and the fact that some two-thirds of D.C. voters use mail ballots, many of which are dropped off on Election Day or received in the days after.

Ranked-choice voting, which was approved by D.C. voters at the ballot box in November 2024, is changing how voters cast ballots and how those ballots are counted.

Unlike the traditional way of voting, where a voter picks a single candidate for each race, in a ranked-choice system, a voter can rank up to five candidates per contest. If any candidate gets more than 50% of first rankings after the first round of counting, they win. But if no one reaches 50%, the lowest-performing candidate in the race is eliminated and the rankings from their supporters’ ballots are reapportioned among the remaining candidates. These tabulation rounds and eliminations continue until one candidate clears the 50% threshold.

D.C. election officials say that after the polls close on June 16, they will report the number of first-choice rankings each candidate gets based on mail ballots that were received before Election Day and in-person votes cast that day or in the weeklong early-voting period that kicked off June 8.

But they say that any subsequent tabulation rounds may not happen until June 21, largely because a significant number of mail ballots traditionally haven’t been received until Election Day or immediately after.

“We just want to have the majority of the votes processed before we start running rounds of tabulation to cut down on inaccurate shifts,” said Evans.

For context, there were 98,221 ballots cast in the 2024 primary. Roughly 70,000 of those were mail ballots, and around 33,000 of those were left in ballot drop boxes on Election Day. Another 7,750 were received by the elections board in the mail on Election Day or during the 10-day period after.

Evans said that the elections board can process only so many ballots at a time, largely because voter signatures on every mail ballot are checked against what the board has on file.

“I keep telling people that the long pole in the tent is not ranked-choice voting. That can be done instantaneously. It is the board’s decision to wait until mail ballots come in,” said Lisa Rice, the executive director of Grow Democracy D.C., the organization that advocated for the ballot initiative that introduced ranked-choice voting to the city. “I credit the board with trying to provide transparency and accuracy for folks. Do I want results quicker? Absolutely.”

The timing of results in cities and states that use ranked-choice voting varies. In New York City, for example, waits for tabulation rounds and results have been similar to the ones projected for D.C. Maine and Alaska, which both use ranked-choice voting for statewide races, results have also taken up to a week.

But according to FairVote, an organization that supports the use of ranked-choice voting, the majority of jurisdictions that use the method release results on Election Day or the next day. San Francisco, which held a local election earlier this month, reported ranked-choice voting results the same night.

“We know there is absolutely an interest in getting results sooner rather than later,” said Evans, adding that election board staff would work to process ballots as quickly as possible to get to tabulation rounds.

The possibility of delayed results could play into the hands of Republicans in Congress and the White House, who wield significant power over D.C. Last year, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-New York) and Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-New York) introduced a bill that would ban the use of ranked-choice voting in D.C. elections, and the House voted to overturn a D.C. law that allows noncitizens to vote in local elections.

Rep. Randy Fine (R-Florida) took to social media last week to criticize the elections board for sending a mail ballot to a former tenant of his D.C. apartment. “All anyone would need to do is fill it out, sign it, and send it back,” he wrote. (D.C. verifies signatures on mail ballots, and voting with someone else’s mail ballot is a felony.)

“I think the important thing is for us to get it right and be accurate, so my request to voters is to be patient,” said Christina Henderson, an at-large Independent D.C. Council member who was one of the first proponents of ranked-choice voting in the city’s legislature.

That sentiment was echoed by mayoral candidate Kenyan McDuffie. “The most important outcome from our democratic process is that every ballot is counted and every voter’s voice is respected,” he said.

His principal opponent, the Democratic Council member Janeese Lewis George, said that her campaign is urging supporters to cast their ballots early, either by dropping off mail ballots before Election Day or voting early in person.

“Everybody is a bit nervous about how long it will take to get through the rounds of tabulation,” she said. “The more people we know vote, the more decisive we feel it will be to declare a winner in the race.”