If you’re making plans for election night, you might be better off just going to sleep. The DC Board of Elections (BOE) announced today that final results for the June 16 primary may not be released until June 26, with a complete tabulation not beginning until days after Election Day.
Umm…why?
This primary election season marks DC’s first go-round with ranked choice voting, where voters rank candidates based on preference. As a result, the tabulation of the winner of each race is a little more complicated than a clear majority—instead, every voter’s preference must be taken into account in several rounds of eliminations and vote reallocations.
Because candidates are eliminated in succession of who receives the least first choice votes, those eliminations won’t happen until the BOE is absolutely sure that that candidate received the smallest number of first preferences. DC has a 10-day window for ballots to arrive after Election Day (so long as they are postmarked by Election Day), and thus the first elimination will occur only when the BOE feels confident that most ballots have arrived.
This extended timeline has DC lagging behind other cities that have adopted ranked choice voting. While New York City follows a similar schedule, waiting to release results until all absentee ballots are received, in San Francisco, where ranked choice has been used for decades, preliminary round-by-round results are released on election night. Data by FairVote shows that 79 percent of places using ranked choice voting release results on election night or the following day.
The timeline
The BOE will release “interim results” on election night after the last voters who were in line at 8 PM cast their ballots. After the polls close, they’ll release the first-round results from in-person votes during early voting and on Election Day, as well as mail-in ballots that were processed before Election Day. The BOE says they anticipate “several updates” throughout election night as they process ballots.
Still, the results released on election night will only be first-round votes, or the percentage of voters that ranked a candidate as their top choice. In some races, a winner could be declared on election night if one candidate receives a majority of first-place votes. In more contentious elections, like the mayoral race, this is unlikely.
After election night, the BOE will wait until they have “received and processed the majority of ballots,” and then begin ranked choice voting tabulation. They say they will release interim round-by-round tabulation results as they process ballots, which are currently estimated to be released on June 21 and June 24. The final round-by-round tabulation results will be released on or after June 26.
BOE Executive Director Monica Evans says that they may tabulate results earlier if they feel they receive enough ballots to do so. Even then, it almost certainly won’t be until a few days after the election.
As of June 4, the BOE has received 6,905 ballots in drop boxes around the city, and 13,533 via USPS, totaling just over 20,000 mail-in ballots so far. In the 2022 primary race, just over 88,000 voted by mail—so, if the District stays in step with that number, many more ballots have yet to be cast as Election Day draws near.
Regardless, it seems there will still be celebrations, even if there aren’t firm results. Mayoral candidate Janeese Lewis George’s camp tells us that they’re sticking to their original election night plans, regardless of the extended timeline.
The official certification of election results is tentatively scheduled for July 17—a month later. By then, America will be 250, we’ll have a new Olivia Rodrigo album, and hopefully DC will finally know who our primary winners are.
