Will D.C. Lead the Way on Vote by Mail?

• Author: Creamer, Ella

A NEW BILL WOULD MAKE THE DISTRICT THE FIRST MAJOR BLACK-PLURALITY JURISDICTION TO PERMANENTLY MAIL EVERY REGISTERED VOTER A BALLOT. THAT COULD CHANGE THE NATIONAL CONVERSATION.

The District of Columbia's June 2020 primary was nothing short of a disaster. To minimize the risk of coronavirus transmission, the city abandoned its plan to hold an election the old-fashioned way. It shuttered most of its polling locations, keeping open just 20 full-service vote centers, open to any voter, rather than the 143 precinct-based centers normally in use, and sent every registered eligible voter an application to request an absentee ballot.

This left huge jams at vote centers, with long lines snaking around sidewalks, forcing some voters to wait more than four hours to cast ballots. While more than 90,000 voters--out of the city's roughly 410,000 registered voters--requested absentee ballots, hundreds reported never receiving them. At a conference the day after the election, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser called the event "nothing short of failed execution."

Something had to change.

Learning from their mistakes, D.C. election officials took a different tack for the November general election. This time, they mailed every registered eligible voter a postage-paid ballot, rather than an application to vote absentee; opened up more vote centers; and peppered ballot drop boxes across the city. The approach proved highly successful: Citywide turnout was 66.9 percent--up from 65.3 percent in 2016 and 60.9 percent in 2012. More than 60 percent of voters cast their ballots by mail or drop box, making D.C.'s experiment with mail voting consistent with western states that all saw increased voter turnout after enacting similar vote-at-home systems.

Now, D.C. policy makers want to make the 2020 reforms permanent. Nudged by recent Republican efforts in state legislatures to restrict voting access, Councilmember Charles Allen introduced the Elections Modernization Amendment Act of 2021 before the city council in November. The bill would codify the 2020 election measures into D.C. law. Most significantly, it would require the Board of Elections to send a postage-paid ballot to every registered eligible voter and provide tracking updates on the status of their ballots, giving voters the peace of mind of knowing their mailed-out ballot has been received and counted. Allen hopes his legislation will allow "more and more and more people to be able to vote."

If the legislation passes and is signed into law, D.C. would join a growing number of states--Washington, Oregon, Utah, Hawaii, Colorado, Nevada, Vermont, and...